IN THE INTEREST OF I.R.S., B.L.S., and C.A.T.S. J.L.T. v. GREENE COUNTY JUVENILE OFFICE

IN THE INTEREST OF )
I.R.S., B.L.S., and C.A.T.S. )
)
J.L.T., )
)
Appellant, ) No. SD33150, SD33151 & SD33152
) Consolidated
vs. )
) FILED: August 26, 2014
GREENE COUNTY JUVENILE OFFICE, )
)
Respondent. )
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF GREENE COUNTY
Honorable David C. Jones, Judge
(Before Francis, C.J./P.J., Bates, J., and Scott, J.)
AFFIRMED
PER CURIAM. Appellant (Mother) appeals the termination of her parental
rights (TPR) to three children. The trial court found, in part, a § 211.447.5(3) “failure
to rectify” and that TPR was in each child’s best interest.1 Mother’s challenges to
these findings fail. We affirm.
Failure to Rectify
Three years before the TPR hearing, the children came into juvenile care
under circumstances described in In re I.R.S., 361 S.W.3d 444 (Mo.App. 2012).2
Thus, a termination for failure to rectify required clear and convincing proof that:
1. The conditions that brought each child into care still persisted, or that
other potentially harmful conditions still existed;
and
2. Those conditions were unlikely to be remedied soon enough for the
child to be returned to Mother in the near future, or that continuation
of their parent-child relationship would greatly diminish the child’s
prospects for early integration into a stable and permanent home.
In re P.J., 403 S.W.3d 672, 675-76 (Mo.App. 2012); In re T.A.L., 328 S.W.3d 238,
247 (Mo.App. 2010); § 211.447.5(3).
The trial court found these elements and ruled unfavorably to Mother on each
statutory factor that the court was required to consider. See § 211.447.5(3)(a)-(d).
We view the evidence and reasonable inferences most favorably to the judgments,
I.R.S., 361 S.W.3d at 445, and will summarize the facts accordingly.
Conditions That Led to Assumption of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction
Mother lost her parental rights to two other children (not the subject of these
cases) in Ohio in 2005. I.R.S., who was born the following year, was under the
jurisdiction of the Taney County juvenile division from August 2006 to May 2007
1 Statutory citations are to RSMo 2000, as amended through 2013. Rule references
are to Missouri Court Rules (2013).
2 Facts in our opinion’s next section are taken from I.R.S., 361 S.W.3d at 445-47.
2
due to parental neglect. B.L.S., born in May 2007, and I.R.S. were under the
jurisdiction of the juvenile division from June 2007 to November 2008 due to
parental neglect. Mother’s 18 referrals to the Missouri Children’s Division (“CD”)
resulted in five investigations and eight informal services cases, the latest of which
was closed at Mother’s request in September 2010. Still, Mother’s caseworker
remained concerned about the children and Mother’s parenting abilities. Services
had not improved Mother’s poor interaction with the children, nor remedied her
belligerence or tendency to use services only as a means for transportation.
Mother’s history of poor anger management and mental instability was
ongoing. Such mental instability was, in part, why I.R.S. was placed in care in 2006.
In 2007, shortly after taking the children into care in Taney County, the court
appointed a guardian ad litem (GAL) for Mother. Later that year, a counselor noted
Mother’s unstable moods and symptoms of bipolar disorder. The family was offered
informal services in 2010 due in part to concerns about Mother’s mental instability.
In November 2010, I.R.S.’s daycare reported difficulties working with Mother, who
would get mad and hang up the telephone one day, then would call a few days later
and act as if nothing had happened. Mother tried counseling, but did not follow
through with the counselor’s recommendations. She did not seek medication
therapy despite strong professional advice in 2007 to do so.
3
Mother had limited prenatal care while pregnant with her youngest child,
C.T.S.3 She once called her doctor for pain medication, which was prescribed, but
Mother would not take it because it was not the specific drug she wanted.
Mother and G.S. (“Father”)4 have a history of domestic strife. I.R.S. told her
preschool teacher and a CD investigator that Mother called Father “evil.” I.R.S.
dreamt that Father would kill I.R.S., B.L.S., and Mother. In an April 2010 incident,
Mother called Father at work and asked him to come home. When he arrived,
Mother yelled at him, put the children outside, and locked the door. Father took the
children to a restaurant. Mother called the police and reported that Father had
abducted the children.
In June 2010, Father left the house because Mother was yelling at him as
usual. Mother then called Father so many times that he turned off his cell phone.
The next day, Mother—who was pregnant and driving with a revoked license with
I.R.S. and B.L.S. as passengers—saw Father driving a truck. She chased him in her
car, rammed into the truck, and blocked its path. She exited her car, started
throwing items out of the truck bed, and did not calm down even after police arrived.
Her complaint was that Father did not clean house or help care for the children.
In November 2010, 32 weeks into her pregnancy with C.T.S., Mother was
transported to the hospital by ambulance due to bleeding, pain, and placental
abruption. Within a few hours of arrival, she was complaining about not getting the
3 Referred to in our caption as C.A.T.S.
4 G.S. is the biological father of B.L.S. and C.T.S., and is listed as father on I.R.S.’s
birth certificate. He has filed a separate appeal.
4
pain medication she requested and of needing a cigarette. She wanted her
intravenous lines disconnected and threatened, against medical advice, to leave the
hospital. She argued with Father and hospital security had to be called to separate
them.
After she delivered C.T.S., Mother acted erratically and hysterically. She
refused to take prescribed medications and again threatened to leave the hospital
because she was not getting her painkiller of choice. A psychiatric consultation was
ordered, during which Mother exhibited anxiety and symptoms consistent with
bipolar disorder or Axis II pathology. Mother adamantly refused psychiatric
assistance or to speak to a social worker, and continued to argue with Father while in
the hospital.
Although Mother tried to brush them aside, a CD investigator and a deputy
juvenile officer conducted a newborn crisis assessment at the hospital. Mother
reported that she hated Father, that he had not lived with her during the pregnancy,
and that she terminated informal services because they would not give her rides or
watch the children for her. When juvenile authorities took protective custody of the
children, Mother became irate, complained of prior grievances against the system,
and said she loved Father and that they were working things out as a couple.
The juvenile officer filed petitions alleging that the children needed care and
treatment due in part to Mother’s mental health, anger management issues, and
failure to seek appropriate prenatal care; her history of domestic disturbances with
Father; and the family’s history of involvement with the child-welfare system.
Mother and Father appeared with counsel at a combined adjudication and
5
disposition hearing. The court found that the children were subject to its
jurisdiction and entered judgments to that effect. These judgments were affirmed on
interlocutory appeal. I.R.S., 361 S.W.3d at 445-47, 450.
After Assumption of Juvenile Court Jurisdiction
The initial case goal was to reunite the children with their parents. To that
end, a treatment plan was ordered for Mother.
Three times, the court ordered Mother to submit to psychiatric evaluation, but
she never did. In late 2010, psychologist Mark Bradford evaluated Mother5 and
diagnosed mood disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality
disorder, among other things. Dr. Bradford’s many recommendations included
individual and couples counseling, parenting classes, cooperation with CD and the
juvenile office, and demonstration of stable work and living arrangements. Mother
could have begun to implement these within a few weeks.
In 2013, Dr. Bradford re-evaluated Mother after several “recent misses and no
shows.” Although the formal diagnosis was largely unchanged, Dr. Bradford testified
that Mother “hasn’t gotten any better. I think if anything, she’s gotten worse.”6
5 Dr. Bradford had seen Mother previously (2006), but we do not have a copy of that
evaluation or definitive testimony on diagnosis.
6 Dr. Bradford said the same in his last written report:
Prognosis: We are sad to report that [Mother] seems worse physically and
mentally than the last time we saw her. She believes she has extraordinary
physical problems which completely disable her, and require her to rush to
emergency rooms, stay in a wheel chair. It is as if she is very depressed and
choosing to manifest it via increasing health problems at least partially. She
would deny this, but her frequent trips to the health clinics or emergency
rooms, and her various physical complaints, suggests mental problems as a
major part of the physical problems. It is very questionable when or if she can
care for children with this profile.
6
For one thing, Mother still lacked insight into her circumstances. The
children had been in foster care for more than two years, yet Mother still seemed not
to appreciate why the children had been removed from her care or why they had not
been returned. Dr. Bradford described Mother as “highly resistant of acknowledging
there was ever a problem, period.” Indeed, Mother repeatedly told her final
counselor7 that she (Mother) was an “exceptionally good” parent.
Mother also had become obsessed about physical illness. She claimed poor
health, said she needed to use a wheelchair, and repeatedly sought tests for various
medical conditions, largely yielding negative results. She went to an emergency
room or community health center some 90 times in a span of 30 months. She would
turn angry at doctors, especially when they would not prescribe her narcotics or told
her something she did not want to hear. Once, Mother got so angry that security had
to escort her out of the facility.
Dr. Bradford opined that Mother’s physical ills may be psychological more
than actual, and elaborated:
I think that as time went on, she gravitated towards physical health
problems as a substitute for being a mother. And I think those
physical health problems gave her an escape, physical and
psychological health problems gave her an escape from the
responsibilities of being a parent, and allowed her to fulfill certain
narcissistic impulses like pharmacological treatment of her anxiety.
***
So essentially she’s become addicted to hospitals and drugs and
various physical disorders to escape psychological problems and to
escape personal blame for the inability to care for her children.
7 Dr. Robert Gladden, whose further testimony is noted infra.
7
Dr. Bradford testified that Mother had become skilled “at telling doctors what they
need to hear to get medicine.”
Dr. Bradford described Mother is “a very demanding, needy, sick woman” who
“seemed to never be getting better” and was “basically living a kind of an
increasingly passive dependent life, demanding on others to take care of her.” She
becomes angry and paranoid when she does not get her way. In short, she is a “help
rejecting complainer” who demands help but rejects it if it does not suit her.
Dr. Bradford noted how Mother’s mental condition affected relationships
with her children. Mother was not able to be responsible and consistent in
parenting. She could get overwhelmed with her own issues and be unavailable to the
children. If she would make herself available to the children, Mother would be very
self-centered, easily irritated, and obsessive about her “sickness.” As Dr. Bradford
put it:
As long as she continues to have this -- this obsessive look at all
the physical things that she has wrong, this obsessive look towards
having cancer or having this condition or that condition, as long as
she continues to seek diagnoses or treatment, I think that’s going to
occupy her time. Her sickness will be her children. Her sickness
will be her baby. And she’ll have inadequate time for any other
children.
Dr. Bradford expressed “grave concerns” that Mother could meet even minimum
parenting standards, and deemed it “very questionable when or if she can care for
children with this profile.”
I.R.S.’s counselor predicted serious problems for I.R.S. if she were returned to
Mother’s care, telling the court:
8
I believe that we would see stunted development. I think we
would see that she would have great trouble -- continued trouble
with problem solving. I think that her ODD could possibly transition
into conduct disorder and then transition into antisocial personality
disorder as she got older, if nothing changed, if things remained as
they are.
Some of these concerns were borne out during limited, supervised family
visits. Mother typically wanted to control these visits, but she left the actual
parenting to Father, with whom she often found fault and argued. As one parent
aide put it, “when mom was at the visit, they tended to be everybody walking on
eggshells because nobody wanted to upset mom, nobody wanted to say anything to
get her going.” The parent aide described “kind of a pattern” where Mother would
get overwhelmed or irritated, Father would try to calm her, then Mother would “start
in” on Father and berate him “[t]o the point that, you know, there was a couple times
I had to get a worker to come in and help.” Once, participants in a class down the
hall “all came over to make sure that everybody over there was okay, because mom
was yelling so loud.” Most visits “ended with mom being upset, and the kids very
well aware that mom was upset,” according to this aide, who testified that “in my [17]
years of doing this, I have not seen a mother who seems to be not really
understanding what’s going on during visits and how that’s being seen by her
children.”
Dr. Gladden was the last of several therapists and counselors who tried to help
Mother. At trial, he described Mother as bombastic, angry, hostile, conspiratorial,
and persistently “argumentative and emotionally and verbally combative with others
that are trying to take care of [the] children.” Doggedly, Dr. Gladden kept trying:
9
“Like I say, about every third time, she would fire me and scream and yell. And I
would come back the next week and I’d say, well, let’s try it again.” Yet Dr. Gladden
noted that Mother “absolutely denied that she’[d] ever shown significant
argumentative or disruptive behaviors.”
Dr. Gladden testified that in 36 years of practice he never has “seen a mother
this blindly unwilling to modify behavior,” and opined that Mother could not meet
minimal parenting standards: “I couldn’t in any clinical professional way find it at
all suitable to say that she could parent calmly, effectively, and continuously as what
the children need.” As much as Dr. Gladden might like to see this family reunited,
he would not now put the children back “with a lady that is this out of control.”
Other witnesses agreed that Mother’s anger and behavior had gotten no
better, and in some ways was worse, than when the children came into care.
Between the third and fourth days of the TPR trial, police were dispatched to
Mother’s house because she was yelling at Father and physically preventing him
from leaving. Even after an officer arrived, Mother continued to yell at Father and
would not follow the officer’s instructions. Notably, the officer testified that Mother
showed no signs of medical disability or limitation and was not using a wheelchair.
The officer was so concerned about Mother’s mental stability that he considered
placing her in a 96-hour involuntary mental health commitment.
In December 2013, more than three years after the children last came into
care, the court terminated Mother’s parental rights on multiple statutory grounds,
including failure to rectify.
10
Mother’s Complaint and Analysis
We reject Mother’s scant argument that the failure to rectify findings are
against the weight of evidence. Mother claims she complied with the “important
portions” of her treatment plan and disputes the finding that she consistently
refused to change her behavior. But it is more accurate, on the record as we must
view it, to say Mother completed some of the treatment plan without making
significant progress on the whole. Partial treatment plan compliance does not
preclude TPR for failure to rectify. In re G.G.B., 394 S.W.3d 457, 470 (Mo.App.
2013). Further, the trial court was entitled to credit repeated testimony that Mother
did not change her behavior, at least not for the better.
Also flawed is Mother’s attack on findings about her mental condition. The
trial record, above-summarized only in part, adequately supports all three prongs of
such findings (documentation, duration, and severity of effect). See In re T.L.B.,
376 S.W.3d 1, 12 (Mo.App. 2011). Oddly, Mother opines that the trial court must
have doubted the proof, since that court did not sua sponte appoint her a GAL when
mental conditions ascribed to her, in Mother’s own words, “point to a very disturbed
person.”8 Suffice it to say that the trial court’s detailed findings leave no doubt or
ambiguity about how it weighed the evidence and witness credibility on this issue.
8 We reject Mother’s plain error claim that a GAL should have been appointed for
her. Mother cites § 211.462.2’s mandate for a GAL if a parent is a minor or
incompetent, but she was neither. That a GAL was appointed for Mother in a prior
case does not prove that this trial court erred (much less plainly erred) in not doing
so sua sponte here. Finally, Mother’s failure to suggest any prejudice – let alone
manifest injustice or a miscarriage of justice – dooms this point. Rule 84.13(c).
11
Even less meritorious is the complaint that the court’s chemical dependency
finding “was gleaned entirely” from Mother’s medical records that were in evidence
and to which she raises no objection on appeal.
But much more to the point, Mother “fails to set forth a viable against-the-
weight-of-evidence argument as she merely sets forth selective evidence contrary to
the trial court’s finding while ignoring favorable evidence and the trial court’s
credibility determinations.” In re I.G.P., 375 S.W.3d 112, 126 (Mo.App. 2012). As
in other contexts, this failure to take account of our standard of review robs Mother’s
argument of persuasiveness or analytical value. See Ivie v. Smith, No. SC93872,
slip op. at 19 (Mo. banc July 8, 2014); J.A.R. v. D.G.R., 426 S.W.3d 624, 632 (Mo.
banc 2014); Houston v. Crider, 317 S.W.3d 178, 189 (Mo.App. 2010). Given the
gravity of a TPR judgment, we have reviewed the record ex gratia to be sure these
are not the “rare” cases warranting against-the-weight reversal. Ivie, slip op. at 13.
They are not. An overwhelming volume of evidence supports the trial court’s failure
to rectify findings and its judgments as a whole.
Extended discussion is unnecessary. Mother’s sole challenge to this statutory
ground for termination fails. Thus, we need not reach her challenges to the neglect
finding as one statutory ground is enough to sustain a TPR judgment. In re J.L.G.,
399 S.W.3d 48, 63 (Mo.App. 2013).
Best Interest
Mother’s one-paragraph argument against the best interest findings, once
again, fails to consider our standard of review and “makes [her] challenge to the
circuit court’s best interest findings of no analytical or persuasive value.” J.A.R.,
12
426 S.W.3d at 632. Also once again, ex gratia review confirms that Mother is not
entitled to relief. The above-cited evidence amply refutes her complaint; other proof
further supports the court’s findings.
I.R.S.’s counselor testified that Mother and I.R.S. do not have a healthy
relationship. The counselor was concerned that I.R.S. was enmeshed with Mother to
the extent that I.R.S. believed she had to feel what Mother was feeling. I.R.S. was
insecure in part because she strove to please Mother but always fell short. Mother’s
behaviors contributed to I.R.S.’s emotional and behavioral difficulties, according to
the counselor, who remained in favor of no contact between I.R.S. and Mother.
B.L.S. had behavior problems and was delayed in her education, but was
“doing much better” in her current placement – progressing, doing well in school,
and behaving better. B.L.S. wants to be part of a family and has raised the issue of
adoption with her counselor.
C.T.S. has never lived with Mother and apparently does not know who she is.
Lack of bonding is substantial evidence that termination is in the child’s best
interest, even if the parent’s opportunities to bond were limited. In re Z.L.R., 347
S.W.3d 601, 611 (Mo.App. 2011).
All the children had been in care at least three years at the time of the TPR
hearing. C.T.S. had been in care his whole life. This was the third time in foster care
for seven-year-old I.R.S.; the second time for six-year-old B.L.S. CD and the
children’s GAL recommended TPR so that the children could achieve permanency.
“Every child is entitled to a permanent and stable home.” Id. at 608.
13
We deny this point and affirm the judgments insofar as they terminate
Mother’s parental rights.
14