Title: In re Marcus E.

State: maine

Issuer: Maine Supreme Court

Document:

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2017 ME 200 
Docket: 
Pen-17-201 
Submitted 
On Briefs: September 27, 2017 
Decided: 
October 5, 2017 
 
Panel: 
SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, and HUMPHREY, JJ. 
 
 
IN RE MARCUS E. 
 
 
PER CURIAM 
 
[¶1]  The mother of Marcus E. appeals from a judgment of the District 
Court (Bangor, Campbell, J.) terminating her parental rights to Marcus 
pursuant to 22 M.R.S. § 4055(1)(A)(1)(a) and (B)(2)(a), (b)(i)-(ii) (2016).1  
She challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to support the judgment.  
Because the evidence supports the court’s findings and discretionary 
determination, we affirm the judgment. 
 
[¶2]  On September 23, 2015, the mother agreed to the following 
language of a jeopardy order for the child and his sibling:2 
                                         
1  The court entered a judgment terminating the parental rights of the child’s father on June 27, 
2016.  The father is not a party to this appeal.   
2  The child’s sibling is in the custody of her father and is no longer part of these proceedings.   
    At the termination hearing, the mother claimed that she had not been aware that she could 
disagree with the jeopardy finding and require the Department of Health and Human Services to 
prove jeopardy at a contested hearing.  The court’s finding that her claim was not credible is 
supported by evidence that the court asked the mother at the jeopardy hearing if she was aware of 
her rights and if she was agreeing to the jeopardy order of her own free will.   
 
2 
The minor children are in circumstances of [j]eopardy to their 
health and welfare in the care and custody of their mother . . . due 
to threat of serious harm.  [The mother] allowed [the children] to 
live in the same home as her father . . . despite the fact that her 
father was convicted of sexually abusing her as a child. . . .  [The 
child’s sibling] was sexually abused by [the mother’s father] while 
in [the] mother’s care.  [The mother] did not take adequate steps 
to protect her children and still resides with [her father].  [She] 
has struggled to recognize the risk posed to her children.   
 
 
[¶3]  On April 24, 2017, based on competent evidence in the record, the 
court found, by clear and convincing evidence, that the mother was unwilling 
or unable to protect the child from jeopardy and unwilling or unable to take 
responsibility for the child within a time reasonably calculated to meet his 
needs and that termination of her parental rights is in the child’s best interest.  
See 22 M.R.S. § 4055(B)(2)(a), (b)(i)-(ii); In re Robert S., 2009 ME 18, ¶ 15, 966 
A.2d 894.  The court based this determination on the following findings of fact: 
[M]other has made no progress, whatsoever, on the central issue 
in this case.  Mother has gained no insight into the risk that her 
father presents to her children.  Rather than gaining insight, 
mother is trying to convince people that her father does not pose 
a risk to children.  The . . . mother continues to demonstrate poor 
judgment and a complete lack of protective capacity with respect 
to her children.   
 
. . . . 
 
. . . The court does not believe that mother will keep her father 
away from [the child] if [the Department] is not involved.  Mother 
does not have the ability to recognize and protect [the child] from 
 
3 
unsafe people and unsafe situations.  Nothing has changed in two 
years. . . .   
 
. . . . 
 
[The child] has been placed with [his foster parents] since 
February of 2016.  [They] have provided a loving, safe, and stable 
home for [him].  [They] have been providing excellent care for 
[him]. . . .   
 
. . . [The foster parents] love [the child] very much, and they want 
very much to adopt him.  [The child] needs a safe and permanent 
home, which mother is unable to provide.   
 
 
[¶4]  Given these findings and the court’s other specific findings of fact, 
all of which are supported by competent evidence in the record, the court did 
not err or abuse its discretion in determining that the mother was unfit and 
that termination of the mother’s parental rights, with a permanency plan of 
adoption, is in the child’s best interest.  See In re Robert S., 2009 ME 18, ¶ 15, 
966 A.2d 894; In re Thomas H., 2005 ME 123, ¶¶ 16-18, 889 A.2d 297. 
 
[¶5]  The mother nonetheless contends that the court’s judgment is not 
supported by competent evidence in the record because the Department did 
not prove that her father was in fact convicted of sexually abusing a minor.  
The court’s determination that the mother’s rights to the child should be 
terminated, however, was not based upon a finding that her father had been 
convicted of a specific crime.  Rather, it was based on the mother’s failure—
 
4 
even after receiving two years of reunification services—to address a concern 
for the child’s safety that was identified by the Department and clearly agreed 
to by the mother at the jeopardy hearing.3  See In re Scott S., 2001 ME 114, 
¶ 15, 775 A.2d 1144 (“[T]he [termination] hearing focused, as it should, not on 
the original reason for the children’s removal from the parents’ home, but on 
the parents’ actions since that time and their ability, contemporaneous with 
the termination hearing and into the future, to provide safe care for the 
[children].”).  Although the mother testified at the termination hearing that 
she had lied when she reported that her father had sexually abused her and 
that her father was innocent, the court acted well within its authority in 
determining that her testimony was not credible.  See In re I.S., 2015 ME 100, 
¶ 11, 121 A.3d 105 (“[I]t was within the court’s province, as fact-finder, to 
determine the weight and credibility to be afforded to evidence.”).   
 
The entry is: 
Judgment affirmed. 
                                         
3  Although the court was required to make its unfitness and best interest determinations by a 
higher standard of proof than its findings in earlier stages of the proceedings, including the 
jeopardy stage, the same judge presided over nearly the entirety of these child protective 
proceedings and was entitled to consider the evidence presented throughout.  See In re Scott S., 
2001 ME 114, ¶¶ 12-13, 775 A.2d 1144.  Additionally, the Department was not required to prove 
that the mother’s father was convicted of a certain crime at each stage of the proceeding.  See id. 
¶ 15; In re Rachel J., 2002 ME 148, ¶ 19, 804 A.2d 418 (“The nature of the proof required in the child 
protective context is different than in the criminal context; the court is assessing a risk, not 
determining whether the father committed a criminal act.”). 
 
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Randy G. Day, Esq., Garland, for appellant mother 
 
Janet T. Mills, 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-2015-29 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY