A decision by a Maricopa County judge to terminate a father’s parental rights to three children due to neglect, abuse, and abandonment following seven years of child welfare involvement with the family was affirmed by the Arizona Court of Appeals last week.
“Father has a fundamental but not absolute right to custody of his children,” the Feb. 4 unanimous appellate decision notes. “If denied severance, the Children would have remained with a neglectful parent. Furthermore, the Children are adoptable and succeeding in their current placements.”
Court records show the three children were removed from the father’s custody in July 2012 due to claims of domestic violence, substance abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. Shortly after the 2012 removal, a Maricopa County judge ordered the Arizona Department of Child Services (DCS) to provide the father with reunification services.
Arizona Daily Independent is not using the father’s name to protect the privacy of the children.
Over the next eight years, DCS arranged for or provided the father substance-abuse treatment, substance-use testing, parent-aide services, supervised-visitation aides, psychological consultations, multiple psychological evaluations, psychosexual evaluations, bonding and best-interest assessments, family therapists, individual counselors, two family reunification teams, a child-and-family team, team decision-making meetings, and a family interventionalist.
In 2012, the father initially refused to participate in counseling -he contended it was not necessary- and showed “little behavioral change,” according to DCS reports. However, by mid-2014 a licensed psychologist concluded the three children could live with the father although they would remain dependents of the state.
The return took place in July 2014, but within weeks DCS received new reports of problems in the home, including violence against the children and a lack of supervision.
“DCS also learned that Father was not providing (two children) with their prescribed ADHD medication, with a report that Father was keeping the medication for himself,” the appellate decision noted. “The court again removed the Children from Father in October 2014.”
Reunification remained a priority for DCS and the family, and sometime after December 2016 one child dropped from dependency status and returned to the father’s full custody. The other two children were returned to their father’s physical custody in August 2018 although they remained dependents of the state.
Unfortunately, new abuse and neglect allegations were reported to DCS in early 2019. Public records show the father physically abused the children, refused them food and medication, and threatened to slit their throats. He also threatened to throw them outside naked.
In April 2019 all three children were once again removed from the father’s care, and each was diagnosed with PTSD due to physical and emotional abuse. DCS asked a judge with the Maricopa County Superior Court to terminate the father’s parental rights.
The same psychologist who recommended reunification in 2014 concluded in 2019 that being with the father was not in the children’s best interests, not even on a visitation basis. An eight-day parental severance hearing in early 2020 resulted in a finding by Judge Jeffrey Rueter that the preponderance of the evidence supported termination of the father’s parental right as being in the best interest of all three children.
The father then appealed Rueter’s ruling.
“The juvenile court was presented with substantial evidence of physical and emotional abuse,” the court of appeals noted. “The court heard testimony that Father whipped the Children, ignored sexual misconduct inflicted upon them and left the Children hungry. The record also shows that Father threatened to kill the Children and leave them naked in the streets for ‘everyone to see.’ Father’s abuse caused the Children to develop PTSD.”
The parental rights of the children’s mother were terminated by the juvenile court in 2015. She did not appeal that decision.
