Case Title: In re Child of Nicholas W.

Citation: 

Docket Number: 2020 ME 16

State: maine

Court: Maine Supreme Court

Date: 2020-01-30T00:00:00Z

Document:
MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2020 ME 16 
Docket: 
Ken-19-346 
Submitted 
On Briefs: January 23, 2020 
Decided: 
January 30, 2020 
 
Panel: 
ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, and HUMPHREY, JJ. 
 
 
IN RE CHILD OF NICHOLAS W. 
 
 
PER CURIAM 
[¶1]  Nicholas W., the father, and Tiffany W., the mother, appeal from a 
judgment of the District Court (Augusta, E. Walker, J.) terminating their parental 
rights to their child.  Both parents challenge (1) the sufficiency of the evidence 
supporting the court’s findings of their parental unfitness, (2) the court’s 
determination that the termination of their parental rights was in the child’s 
best interest, and (3) the sufficiency of the rehabilitation and reunification 
efforts made by the Department of Health and Human Services.  The mother 
additionally argues that the court abused its discretion by admitting 
out-of-court statements made by the child.  We affirm the judgment. 
 
[¶2]  This matter began when the Department filed a petition for a child 
protection order and a preliminary protection order for the child in July 2018.  
See 22 M.R.S. §§ 4032, 4034 (2018).  The petition alleged that the child was at 
risk due to ongoing domestic violence between the parents and the mother’s 
 
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untreated mental health issues, and noted that the Department had been 
involved with the parents for similar reasons in the past.  The court (Nale, J.) 
granted the Department’s request for a preliminary protection order the same 
day it was filed and placed the child in the Department’s custody.  See id. 
§ 4034(2).  The parents later waived the opportunity for a summary 
preliminary hearing.  See id. § 4034(4). 
 
[¶3]  In September 2018, the court (E. Walker, J.) entered an agreed-to 
jeopardy order as to both parents, see 22 M.R.S. § 4035 (2018), based on the 
threat of physical and emotional harm to the child as well as the volatile 
domestic situation between the parents.  In February 2019, the Department 
petitioned to terminate both parents’ parental rights, see 22 M.R.S. § 4052 
(2018), and in July 2019 the court held a two-day contested hearing on the 
termination petition.  In August 2019, the court entered a judgment granting 
the termination petition as to both parents. 
 
[¶4]  In its judgment, the court found the following facts by clear and 
convincing evidence.  The mother has significant mental health issues that have 
gone largely untreated.  In addition to having pleaded guilty to multiple 
domestic violence crimes with the father as the victim, the mother has violated 
the conditions of her bail and/or probation multiple times.  The child has 
 
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witnessed the domestic violence between her parents and it scared her. The 
mother has previously instructed the child to lie to Department officials about 
witnessing any violence.  Upon her most recent arrest in February 2019, the 
mother spent five months incarcerated, but spent two of those months at a 
psychiatric facility. 
 
[¶5]  The court went on to find, 
When the Department took custody of [the child] on 
July 3, 2018, both parents had already subjected [the child] to a long 
history of domestic violence and instability.  [The child] had grown 
up in a family with very few rules and little accountability.   
 
 
 
 
. . . .  
 
Mother’s visits with [the child] have been suspended 
repeatedly because Mother made inappropriate comments to [the 
child] about coming to kidnap [the child] from the foster placement.  
Instead of improving her situation and proving that she is ready to 
protect and safely raise [the child], Mother’s position has gotten 
much worse.  Mother now denies ever assaulting or threatening 
Father in spite of pleading guilty to numerous crimes and 
overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Mother has no 
understanding of how to safely parent or protect [the child] and is 
in complete denial of her own mental health problems.  Mother has 
completely failed to reunify with [the child] and [the child] has 
simply given up on Mother. 
 
Although a court may not terminate parental rights based 
solely on a parent’s incarceration, . . . in the present case, Mother 
was released from incarceration numerous times and afforded the 
opportunity to reunify with the [the child].  Mother chose not to 
successfully engage in visits and services and made the bad 
 
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decision to violate her bail and probation, making her unavailable 
to be there for her child. 
 
Father, having been the victim of numerous assault[s] and 
threats by Mother over the years, also shows no real understanding 
about how his conduct and his warped loyalty to Mother impacts 
[the child].  Father has been offered domestic violence victim 
services through DHHS and the Family Violence Project, but he has 
failed to successfully engage.  Father’s number one loyalty is to 
Mother and he has made it clear he will not leave her, no matter 
what.  Father’s denial of his family’s situation has placed and 
continues to place [the child] in real jeopardy: physically, mentally, 
and emotionally.  [The child] would have loved to remain with 
Father if he could have lived apart from Mother, but he has refused 
to do so.  As a result, Father has demonstrated that he is unwilling 
or unable to protect [the child] from jeopardy or take responsibility 
for [the child] and these circumstances are unlikely to change 
within a time which is reasonably calculated to meet the needs of 
[the child].  The court is satisfied with the reasonable efforts by 
DHHS to reunify this broken family. 
 
. . . . 
 
[The child] deserves permanency now, and she is unable to 
wait for her parents to someday possibly demonstrate their 
stability and to solidify a parental relationship.  Mother and 
Father’s opportunity to reunify with [the child] was during the 
course of the child protection case.  Mother did not participate in 
reunification, even when not incarcerated, and missed her 
opportunity.  Father refused or is unable to acknowledge the 
danger that Mother poses to himself and [the child].  While Father 
did well in visiting with [the child] in the last year, he has done very 
little to help [alleviate] the danger of domestic violence in the 
family.  The court finds that it is in [the child’s] best interest to grant 
the Department’s Petition for Termination of Parental Rights in 
order to free her for adoption. 
 
 
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The difficulty for Mother and Father is one of timing.  [The 
child] is now 13 years old and simply cannot continue to wait for 
her parents to do all the things necessary to set up a stable, 
consistent and safe life.  [The child] has established a good bond 
with [her] foster parents and this stability is very important to her.  
[The child] needs a permanent home now and cannot wait any 
longer for Mother and Father to get their lives in order.  This is a 
particularly troubling case because it is clear to this court that 
Mother and Father love [the child] but they have done virtually 
nothing to effectively reunify with [the child] or change their ways. 
 
The court understands that recovery is not a sprint but is, 
instead, a marathon.  The problem is that Mother and Father still 
haven’t even approached the starting line in this race.  What quickly 
becomes apparent, when a[ss]essing this case, is that this process 
has been going on for more than a year now and there has been 
only regression.  Likewise, there is little hope that things involving 
these parents and [the child] will ever change or improve.  The 
court must look at whether Mother and Father will be able to take 
responsibility for [the child] within a time reasonably calculated to 
meet her needs, and they cannot. . . .  [The child] has been in DHHS 
custody for almost 13 months.  [The child] has been in the care of 
her loving foster parents for that entire time and made great 
improvements in her mental, emotional, and physical health.  [The 
child] has clearly bonded with [her] new family and removing her 
would likely do greater damage than has already been done.  Each 
month is a long time in the life of a child at this age.  With no clear 
timeline in sight, it is apparent that Mother and Father cannot take 
responsibility for [the child] within a time reasonably calculated to 
meet her needs. 
 
 
[¶6]  These findings, all of which are supported by competent evidence, 
are sufficient to support the court’s ultimate findings that the parents are 
unable or unwilling to protect the child from jeopardy or take responsibility for 
her in a time reasonably calculated to meet her needs, and that both parents 
 
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have failed to make a good faith effort to rehabilitate and reunify with the child.  
See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(b)(i)-(ii), (iv) (2018); In re Thomas D., 
2004 ME 104, ¶ 21, 854 A.2d 195.   
 
[¶7]  Furthermore, the court did not commit clear error or abuse its 
discretion in determining that termination of the parents’ parental rights was 
in the child’s best interest.  See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(B)(2)(a) (2018); 
In re Thomas H., 2005 ME 123, ¶¶ 16-17, 889 A.2d 297.  The father contends 
that the court should have ordered a permanency guardianship rather than the 
termination of his parental rights.  The court did not err or abuse its discretion 
when it rejected this argument and determined that the child’s need for 
permanency would be best served by freeing her for adoption, particularly 
when the guardian ad litem expressly opposed a permanency guardianship and 
there were tensions between the parents and the child’s foster family.  See In re 
Child of Domenick B., 2018 ME 158, ¶¶ 8-10, 197 A.3d 1076; In re Cameron B., 
2017 ME 18, ¶¶ 12-13, 154 A.3d 1199. 
 
[¶8]  We are not persuaded by the parents’ arguments concerning the 
sufficiency of the Department’s efforts to rehabilitate them and reunify them 
with the child.  The court carefully considered the Department’s reunification 
efforts, and there is competent evidence supporting its finding that those efforts 
 
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were reasonable in the circumstances of this case.  We note also that the parents 
never raised any concerns about the Department’s reunification efforts when 
they had the opportunity to do so prior to the termination hearing; instead, 
judicial review orders indicate that the parents appeared before the court on 
two separate occasions and agreed that the Department had “made reasonable 
efforts to reunify and rehabilitate the family” but that their own efforts toward 
reunification had been inadequate. 
 
[¶9]  Lastly, we discern no abuse of discretion in the court’s decision to 
admit out-of-court statements made by the child.  Contrary to the mother’s 
argument that the court should have considered the availability of the child to 
testify directly before admitting the statements, the rules of evidence that 
ordinarily pertain to hearsay have been abrogated by the Legislature in child 
protection cases.  See In re Children of Danielle H., 2019 ME 134, ¶¶ 5-7, 
215 A.3d 217.  By statute, courts have the discretion to “admit and consider oral 
or written evidence of out-of-court statements made by a child” and to “rely on 
that evidence to the extent of its probative value.”  22 M.R.S. § 4007(2) (2018). 
The entry is: 
Judgment affirmed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Andrew Wright, Esq., Brunswick, for appellant mother 
 
John Healy, Esq., Healy Law, LLC, Camden, and Amy McNally, Esq., Woodman 
Edmands Danylik Austin Smith & Jacques, P.A., Biddeford, 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 
 
 
Augusta District Court docket number PC-2018-43 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY