RECORD IMPOUNDED

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-4972-15T1

A-4973-15T1

NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF CHILD 

PROTECTION AND PERMANENCY,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

C.I. and T.K.,

Defendants-Appellants.

__________________________________

IN THE MATTER OF THE GUARDIANSHIP

OF C.T.K., C.S.K., J.C.K, J.M.K.,

I.J.K. and I.C.K., minors.

__________________________________

Submitted September 11, 2017 - Decided 

Before Judges Accurso and O'Connor.

On appeal from Superior Court of New Jersey, 

Chancery Division, Family Part, Union 

County, Docket No. FG-20-0007-15.

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney 

for appellant C.I. (Dorian Smith, Designated 

Counsel, on the brief).

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney 

for appellant T.K. (Steven E. Miklosey, 

Designated Counsel, on the brief).

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court." 

Although it is posted on the internet, this opinion is binding only on the 

parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R.1:36-3.

September 29, 2017
2 A-4972-15T1

Christopher S. Porrino, Attorney General, 

attorney for respondent (Andrea M. 

Silkowitz, Assistant Attorney General, of 

counsel; Ellen L. Buckwalter, Deputy 

Attorney General, on the brief).

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, Law 

Guardian, attorney for minors (Joseph H. 

Ruiz, Designated Counsel, on the brief).

PER CURIAM

In this consolidated matter, defendants C.I. and T.K. 

appeal from a final judgment terminating their parental rights 

to their six children, C.T.K., C.S.K., J.C.K., J.M.K., I.J.K. 

and I.C.K., now ages fourteen to four. They contend the 

Division of Child Protection and Permanency failed to prove the 

four prongs of the best interests standard of N.J.S.A. 30:4C15.1a(1)-(4) by clear and convincing evidence.1 The Law Guardian 

for the children joins with the Division in urging we affirm the 

judgment. Having considered defendants' arguments in light of 

the record and controlling law, we affirm the termination of 

their parental rights.

 

1 C.I., although claiming the Division failed to prove all four 

prongs, has not offered an argument on the first prong. 

Accordingly, we deem the issue abandoned. See Telebright Corp. 

v. Director, 424 N.J. Super. 384, 393 (App. Div. 2012); see also

Pressler & Verniero, Current N.J. Court Rules, comment 5 on R.

2:6-2 (2017) ("It is, of course, clear that an issue not briefed 

is deemed waived.").
3 A-4972-15T1

The facts are fully set forth in the trial court's very 

detailed 111-page opinion, and we do not repeat them here. We 

need only note the family first came to the Division's attention 

in June 2010 when it substantiated C.I. for neglect based on the 

older children's failure to regularly attend school. The 

Division substantiated both C.I. and T.K. for inadequate 

supervision in April 2011 when it found the children dirty and 

not properly clothed. 

A few months later, the five oldest children were removed 

from their parents' care after the Division received another 

referral that C.I. and T.K.'s home was again in deplorable 

condition, and the children had been left overnight with C.I.'s 

eighteen-year-old brother, whom C.I. had already conceded was an 

inappropriate supervisor. T.K. reported he and C.I. had 

separated, and he was sleeping in his car. He claimed that upon 

returning the children from an outing late in the evening after 

he had left home, C.I. was nowhere to be found and C.I.'s 

brother and "about 10 guys [were] in the house lying around and 

outside on the porch drinking and shit all up and through the 

house." The Division worker found the children unkempt and 

dirty and a bag of drugs left on the floor. Two of the children 

were found to have dried feces on their buttocks. The children 

were behind on their immunizations and needed dental care. 
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For the next two years, the Division attempted to assist 

defendants in overcoming the conditions that led it to remove 

their children. The Division referred them to substance abuse 

treatment after positive drug screens, and individual and 

couples counseling and anger management classes in response to 

episodes of domestic violence. It provided defendants parenting 

skills classes, and arranged for therapeutic supervised 

visitation, psychological evaluations and therapy. The Division 

worked toward reunification with the couple when they were 

together and worked separately with each when they were apart. 

It repeatedly attempted to have defendants acknowledge C.I.'s 

diagnosed mental health problems and the risks they posed for 

the couple's children. 

Some progress was made. Defendants attended therapy, 

reconciled, and completed parenting-skills classes. There were 

several negative random drug screens. In August 2013, C.I. gave 

birth to the couple's sixth child, I.C.K. Defendants agreed to 

comply with all court ordered services, find permanent housing 

and accept homemaker services, and the baby was released to 

their care. The Division assisted them with utilities in a new 

four-bedroom apartment and provided them furniture. It referred 

defendants to Family Preservation Services for weekly in-home 
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monitoring in anticipation of their reunification with their 

five older children.

The family was reunited in January 2014 when the Division 

returned the five older children to their parents. T.K. was 

employed as a long-haul trucker and was on the road for twelve 

of every fourteen days, however, and C.I. quickly became 

overwhelmed with caring for the children in his absence. The 

eldest child, C.T.K., refused to go to school and was very 

disruptive. The Division arranged for him to be screened, and a

psychiatrist recommended a day-treatment program where the boy 

could receive educational services as well as counseling to aid 

him in his adjustment to living with his parents and siblings. 

Another child was on the autism spectrum and had special needs. 

The Division advocated for the family with the county welfare 

department for assistance with housing, medical coverage and 

food stamps.

In late February, barely six weeks after reunification, the 

Division learned the family had been evicted from their

apartment, a fact defendants had concealed from their attorneys, 

the Division and the court, and that the entire family was 

living in C.I.'s mother's one-bedroom apartment. A mentor for 

the second-eldest child, C.S.K., reported to the Division that 

the girl claimed not to have eaten since the prior afternoon, 
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and that she and her older brother, then ten, had been left at 

home alone to care for their younger siblings for the past three 

nights. The Division substantiated both parents for neglect due 

to inadequate supervision and removed all six children from 

their care. 

C.T.K. and J.C.K. returned to the resource home in which 

they had lived previously and were joined by their baby brother, 

I.C.K. C.S.K. also returned to her prior resource home and 

J.M.K. and I.J.K. were placed together in a new resource home. 

The children were residing in those same homes at the time of 

trial with resource parents committed to adopting them. The 

Division's expert opined that disrupting the secure attachments 

the children had forged with their resource parents would cause 

the children enduring harm. 

The Division continued to provide services to defendants 

following their failed reunification, but they were largely noncompliant, refusing to participate in therapy and accept other 

services. Their attendance at visitation was sporadic and the 

visits were often chaotic. Defendants blamed the children for 

the chaos and the older children for the reports to the Division 

that resulted in the breakup of the family. In February 2015, 

the court ordered that C.I. and T.K. be limited to seeing only 

three children at a time in order to prevent defendants from 
7 A-4972-15T1

being overwhelmed by having to interact with all of their 

children at one time. 

That same month, C.S.K. reported she had been sexually 

abused by C.I.'s brother four years earlier. C.I. was

uncontrollably angry over the revelation. Neither defendant 

believed her, and the Division could not establish the 

allegations. Nevertheless, the Dorothy B. Hersch Regional Child 

Protection Center recommended the child receive counseling by a 

professional in the area of child sexual abuse and be screened 

for sexually-transmitted diseases. 

Based on his detailed rendition of the facts adduced at 

trial and his assessments of the credibility of the witnesses 

who testified, the judge found the Division established all four 

prongs of the best interests standard by clear and convincing 

evidence. He found defendants harmed their children by failing 

to provide them a safe and stable home, failing to address their 

identified parenting deficiencies, minimizing their problems and 

blaming the children for the removals instead of accepting 

responsibility for their continued failure to adequately care 

for them. He found the persistence of defendants' parenting 

deficiencies after a failed attempt at reunification, their 

unwillingness to reengage in services and their minimization of 

their own problems while casting blame on their children and the 
8 A-4972-15T1

Division demonstrated their unwillingness to recognize or 

eliminate the harm they had inflicted. 

Cataloging the many services the Division provided both 

defendants, the judge concluded the Division had easily met its 

obligation to provide them the services they needed to correct 

the conditions that led to the children's placement. The judge 

also found the Division had explored, without success, 

alternatives to termination, assessing, and ruling out, all 

friends and relatives put forth by C.I. and T.K. 

Finally, the judge concluded, based on the expert 

testimony, that termination of defendants' parental rights would 

not do more harm than good. He relied on the results of the 

positive bonding evaluations between the children and their 

resource parents and the expert's testimony that the children 

were not safe in their parents' care. The judge concluded the 

children deserved the stability and permanency their parents had 

been unwilling or unable to provide and that termination of 

their rights would further that end.

Our review of a trial court's decision to terminate 

parental rights is limited. N.J. Div. of Youth & Family Servs. 

v. F.M., 211 N.J. 420, 448-49 (2012). We generally "defer to 

the factual findings of the trial court because it has the 

opportunity to make first-hand credibility judgments about the 
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witnesses who appear on the stand; it has a 'feel of the case' 

that can never be realized by a review of the cold record." 

N.J. Div. of Youth & Family Servs. v. E.P., 196 N.J. 88, 104 

(2008) (quoting N.J. Div. of Youth & Family Servs. v. M.M., 189 

N.J. 261, 293 (2007)).

Our review convinces us the trial judge's findings are 

amply supported by the trial testimony. Defendants never 

managed to be able to provide these children with a safe and 

stable home at any point after they were removed from their care 

in 2011. As the judge several times noted, the five older 

children had spent fifty-seven of the sixty months preceding his 

decision in the care of resource families, and I.C.K. had lived 

with his resource parents for all but six months of his life.

Defendants failed to visit consistently while their 

children were being cared for by others, and could not even 

manage supervised visitation with all of their children at one 

time. "A parent's withdrawal of that solicitude, nurture, and 

care for an extended period of time is in itself a harm that 

endangers the health and development of the child." In re 

Guardianship of D.M.H., 161 N.J. 365, 379 (1999). We reject 

defendants' assertion that the Division sabotaged reunification 

by returning all five older children to them at one time. 
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We are satisfied the record supports the judge's findings 

that defendants harmed the children by their neglect and 

inability to properly care for them, that they refused and 

failed to complete the services offered, that their plans for 

reunification were wholly unrealistic and that termination of 

their parental rights will not do more harm than good.

Affirmed.