In re Child of Peter T.

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2019 ME 56
Docket: 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
4

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
5

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).
7

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