Court Opinion

ID: 9687722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:43:28.499963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:30.428693
License: Public Domain

SCHLEGEL, Presiding Judge
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority opinion that services to this family need not await admission by the father that he was the perpetrator of the sexual abuse on this little girl. To require such an admission is unrealistic and may very well be an admission that is untrue. To deny services to the family, or the chance for the child to be reunited with her parent unless such an admission — true or not — is made, is an invitation for continuation of foster care and ultimately the termination of the parent-child relationship. The sounds of the claim that the parents have been unwilling to avail themselves of the services that are available are so familiar that one only need tune in the future sounds to hear them applied to this case.
Of course, it is necessary to protect children from sexual abuse by anyone, be it a parent or a stranger. It may be that the course of this case in the future will convince the court that placement in the home of either parent is too high a risk of such abuse. At the moment, however, it is not a proven postulate, and the attorney for the child believes it to be in the child’s best interest that she be returned to the home of her father.
I dissent only with respect to the majority’s purpose for remanding to the district court. The majority only directs the court to order the agency to find ways to convince the district court that the return of the child should be forestalled. I would require that the child be continued as a child in need of assistance and would direct the court to order the child returned to her father’s home, with supervision provided by the department of human services, to the end that the needed adjustments, if any, to the father’s home and the mother’s visitation be made.