Child’s best interests; In re MJC; Effect of relative placement; In re CJM; Criminal sexual conduct (CSC)

Holding that the trial court did not clearly err in finding that terminating respondent-father’s parental rights was in the child’s (PDS) best interests, the court affirmed the termination order. It concluded the record made it clear that the trial court properly evaluated PDS’s “best interests based on all the available evidence, which included but was not limited to the CPS report.” It noted the trial court “expressly acknowledged that it was required to consider PDS’s individual needs and stated that” it considered her “‘as an individual child who is ten and a half years old on her own merits.’ [It] also expressly acknowledged that it was required to consider whether termination” was for adoption, and noted that was not the case as the DHHS did not seek to terminate the mother’s rights. Thus, it “found that this factor weighed against” terminating respondent’s parental rights, as did PDS’s relative placement. It additionally “duly considered respondent’s ability to provide a safe and permanent home for PDS as well as the parent-child bond between them, and had weighed all the evidence available to it when doing so.” As to the safety and permanency of his home, it “found that respondent had pleaded no contest to the repeated sexual abuse of” PDS’s half-sibling (DP) “while they lived together approximately one year prior and that, at the time of the hearing, he had multiple . . . (CSC) charges—two of which involved a victim under the age of 13 years old—pending against him. [It] found that although there were no allegations of sexual abuse of PDS by respondent at that time, PDS would nonetheless be ‘at an imminent and an immediate risk of harm’ in [his] care because she faced a significant risk of sexual abuse, particularly given that she was about the same age as DP when respondent first began sexually abusing her.” There was conflicting evidence as to the parent-child bond. The trial court found that, regardless of its strength, “that bond—along with the other factors weighing against termination—were vastly outweighed by the risk of harm to PDS’s safety and wellbeing that respondent posed.” Further, the record evidence about his “parenting abilities and history of domestic violence only further support [its] best-interests determination.”