In re Child of Peter T. , 2019 ME 56 ( 2019 )

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2019 ME 56Docket: Pen-18-441
Submitted
on Briefs: April 9, 2019
Decided: April 16, 2019
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
IN RE CHILD OF PETER T.
PER CURIAM
[¶1] Peter T. appeals from a judgment of the District Court (Bangor,
Jordan, J.) terminating his parental rights to his child pursuant to 22 M.R.S.
§ 4055(1)(B)(2)(a), (b)(i)-(ii) (2018).1 He challenges only the court’s
determination that termination of his parental rights is in the child’s best
interest. We affirm the judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
[¶2] The following facts, which are supported by competent record
evidence, are drawn from the court’s judgment and the procedural record. See
In re Children of Christopher S., 2019 ME 31, ¶ 2, ---A.3d---.
1 The court also entered an order terminating the mother’s parental rights to the child after the
mother consented to the termination. See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(B)(1) (2018). She does not appeal
from that judgment.
2
[¶3] In April of 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services filed
a petition for child protection and preliminary protection orders on behalf of
the child, who was then three years old. See 22 M.R.S. §§ 4032-4034 (2018).
The petition alleged that the father had been convicted of unlawful sexual
contact with a child under the age of 12, see 17-A M.R.S. § 255-A(1)(F-1) (2018),
and posed an immediate risk of serious harm of sexual abuse to his own child.
The court (Mallonee, J.) issued a preliminary protection order and placed the
child in the Department’s custody.
[¶4] The following August, the court (Jordan, J.) entered an agreed-upon
order finding jeopardy as to the father based on his sexual assault conviction,
his history of diagnosed mental health conditions, and a concern about his
anger. See 22 M.R.S. § 4035 (2018). The order required the father to participate
in several types of services and interventions, and allowed him supervised
visitation with the child “as deemed appropriate by DHHS, provided it is in [the
child’s] best interest.” The court held three judicial review and permanency
planning hearings from December of 2016 through May of 2017, see 22 M.R.S.
§§ 4038, 4038-B (2018), and after each hearing issued a consent order
continuing the terms of the jeopardy order.
3
[¶5] In January of 2018, the court held a fourth judicial review hearing,
where the father contested the Department’s assertion that jeopardy had not
been alleviated. In an order entered after the hearing, the court found that the
child whom the father had sexually assaulted, resulting in the conviction, was a
family member. The court further found that the father’s explanation of the
incident resulting in that conviction—that his sexual assault of the child was
“accidental” and that he had “confused [the victim] for his adult wife”—was
“completely unbelievable” and that “[s]uch minimization and evasion, after four
years of sex offender therapy, convinces the Court that he is still a danger to
children.” The court concluded that the father continued to pose a risk of
reoffending and that “jeopardy as to [the father] continues unabated.”
[¶6] In March of 2018, the Department filed a petition to terminate the
father’s parental rights. The following August, the court held a consolidated
hearing on termination and judicial review, where the court heard testimony
from the child’s departmental caseworker, the guardian ad litem, and the
father. The caseworker testified that, to her knowledge, the father had not
participated in sex offender treatment or any other services to alleviate the
jeopardy found by the court at the January 2018 judicial review hearing. The
father conceded that jeopardy had not been resolved but requested that the
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court give him six additional months “to show that things are different and that
his situation would permit . . . a trial placement.”
[¶7] At the conclusion of the hearing, the court orally granted the
Department’s termination petition. The court determined that the father was
parentally unfit because he was neither able to protect the child from jeopardy
nor able to take responsibility for the child, and would be unable to do either
within a time reasonably calculated to meet the child’s needs, see 22 M.R.S.
§ 4055(1)(B)(2)(b)(i)-(ii)—circumstances that the court noted were not
contested by the father. The court also concluded that termination of the
father’s parental rights is in the child’s best interest, see id. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(a),
because, absent termination, the delay in creating permanency for the child
would be too great. More specifically, the court found that the father’s request
for an additional six months for him to engage in therapy, to be followed by
months of a trial home placement, would result in “arguably at least another
year before [there would be] any chance of permanency for a child who has
spent almost half her life in State custody.”
[¶8] On October 10, 2018, the court entered a written judgment
terminating the father’s parental rights, in which the court found the following
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additional facts, which are supported by competent record evidence. See In re
Child of Jonathan D., 2019 ME 14, ¶ 5, 200 A.3d 799.
[The father] completed sex offender treatment and
probation[,] . . . participated in mental health and case management
services[,] . . . maintained safe, stable housing[,] . . . participated in
a CODE, the results stating that the chance of [the father]
reoffending is statistically low[;] however, he exhibits an
extraordinary level of minimization and denial after four years of
treatment. . . .
[The father] has been unable to make changes since the
January 31, 2018 Judicial Review Order and the filing of the Petition
for Termination of Parental Rights.
[The child] has been in the custody of DHHS for over two
years. It would be in [the child’s] best interest that [the petition for
the] termination of parental rights of [the father] be granted in
order to achieve permanency.
[¶9] The court also reiterated its determinations, by clear and convincing
evidence, that the father was parentally unfit and that, in order for the child to
be afforded permanency, termination of his parental rights is in the child’s best
interest. See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(a), (b)(i)-(ii). On the same day, the
court also issued a post-termination review order establishing adoption as the
permanency plan for the child. The father filed a timely appeal of the
termination judgment. See 22 M.R.S. § 4006 (2018); M.R. App. P. 2B(c)(1).
6
II. DISCUSSION
[¶10] The father asserts on appeal that the court erred by concluding
that the child’s best interest would be served by terminating the father’s
parental rights, contending that “[i]t is crucial [the child] suffer no more
traumas, no more losses, and that [the] father not be removed from [the child’s]
life absent compelling circumstances.” Contrary to this contention, the
evidence supports the court’s best-interest determination.2
[¶11] “We review the court’s factual findings related to the child’s best
interest for clear error, and its ultimate conclusion regarding the child’s best
interest for an abuse of discretion, viewing the facts, and the weight to be given
them, through the trial court’s lens.” In re Children of Christopher S., 2019 ME
31, ¶ 7, ---A.3d--- (quotation marks omitted). “[T]he best interest
determination does not occur in a vacuum, but rather is part of an ultimate
disposition that must account for the congruence of the judicial decisions
. . . associated with it,” In re Thomas H., 2005 ME 123, ¶ 30, 889 A.2d 297,
including the court’s decision after the contested judicial review approximately
2
The father does not challenge the court’s determination of parental unfitness. Any such
challenge would be unavailing in any event because the record evidence supports that determination.
See In re Children of Anthony M., 2018 ME 146, ¶ 8, 195 A.3d 1229 (stating the standard of review of
a court’s determination of parental unfitness).
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eight months earlier. Moreover, although a child’s best interest and parental
unfitness “are separate elements of a termination case, the court’s findings that
bear on parental unfitness may also be relevant to the question of whether
termination is in the child’s best interest.” In re Children of Christopher S., 2019
ME 31, ¶ 8, ---A.3d--- (emphasis omitted).
[¶12] Here, with support in the record, the court found that, because the
father had not successfully rehabilitated and alleviated the risk he poses to the
child in the more than two years since the child protection action was
commenced, he would not be able to provide the child with a permanent
placement within a time reasonably calculated to meet the child’s needs. See In
re Children of Anthony M., 2018 ME 146, ¶¶ 13-15, 195 A.3d 1229. The father’s
lack of participation in any sex offender treatment or other counseling services
since the January 2018 contested judicial review hearing—where the father
continued to minimize his culpability for sexually assaulting a child even after
being convicted and completing four years of sex offender treatment—
supports the court’s conclusion that the father was still unsafe to parent the
child and would not be able to safely care for the child within the statutory
timeframe.
8
[¶13] At the time of the termination hearing, the child was five years old
and had been in departmental custody for nearly half of her life. As the court
was entitled to conclude, the substantial additional delay proposed by the
father—particularly when over a period of years he had not rehabilitated to a
degree where he could safely care for the child—would be contrary to the
Legislature’s intent of providing for the termination of parental rights where
doing so would “[e]liminate the need for children to wait unreasonable periods
of time for their parents to correct the conditions which prevent their return to
the family” and “[p]romote the adoption of children into stable families rather
than allowing children to remain in the impermanency of foster care.” 22 M.R.S.
§ 4050(2)-(3) (2018).
[¶14] On this record, the court did not err or abuse its discretion by
concluding that the best interest of the child would be served, not by prolonging
the impermanence and uncertainty of foster care, but by terminating the
father’s parental rights so that the child can be placed in a stable and permanent
setting. See id. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(a).
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
9
Robert E. Meggison, Esq., Belfast, for appellant father
Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Meghan Szylvian, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office
of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee Department of Health and Human
Services
Bangor District Court docket number PC-2016-21
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY