Court Opinion

ID: 9780712
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:30:04.488248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:04.697424
License: Public Domain

WOLLHEIM, J.,
dissenting.
For the reasons that follow, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the juvenile court erred when it found that DHS established, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the children’s current conditions endanger their welfare and safety. I would not exercise our discretion to review this case de novo but would instead defer to the explicit and implicit factual findings of the juvenile court, which are supported by evidence in the record. In any event, though, I would find that DHS proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that father, having never remedied the condition that caused him to sodomize young children in his care, poses a current risk to such children, including his own.
Initially, with regard to the standard of review, the majority concedes that neither party has requested de novo review but nonetheless engages in that type of review because the juvenile court’s “most important factual findings either plainly do not comport with uncontroverted evidence in the record or are inconsistent with other express factual findings.” 248 Or App at 718.1 dispute that characterization of the court’s findings, as discussed more fully in the course of this dissent.
As to the merits, this case is not, as the majority contends, about whether a “sex offender can change, on his own, without sex offender treatment”; nor is it about whether there is a “presumption” that father’s failure to complete treatment makes him an “ ’unremediated sex offender.’ ” 248 Or App at 727. Regardless of whether it was possible, short of completing sex offender treatment, for father to remedy whatever caused him to orally and anally sodomize children left in his care, the juvenile court was unwilling to accept father’s self-serving report that any such transformation *731occurred. In other words, the juvenile court did not believe that father, through willpower or otherwise, had remedied the tendency to sexually abuse children that was manifest when father ceased treatment in 1999. I would credit that first-hand assessment, whether or not we engage in de novo review. Fitts v. Case, 243 Or App 543, 552 n 3, 267 P3d 160 (2011) (“On de novo review, we give considerable weight to the findings of the trial judge who had the opportunity to observe the witnesses and their demeanor in evaluating the credibility of their testimony.”).
This case is really about father’s 10-year absence from Oregon and whether that passage of time precludes the inferences that would otherwise reasonably be drawn about the risks posed by a person who has sodomized small children. In my view, the passage of time is evidence that a court considers in determining whether someone with father’s history continues to pose a risk to children, but the passage of time does not wipe the slate clean. The record includes evidence that father has an extensive history of sexual abuse; that he failed to complete a sex offender program (after again viewing child pornography); that he was unable to appreciate the nature of his conduct; and that he had a tendency to place blame elsewhere. After considering that and other evidence, the juvenile court took jurisdiction of the children on the ground that father poses a present risk to repeat his prior conduct — a risk that mother fails to appreciate. The record supports the juvenile court judgment, and I therefore respectfully dissent.
Many of the relevant facts are recited in the majority’s de novo review. At the risk of redundancy, some of them bear repeating, along with additional context. In 1994, father’s then-girlfriend left her children with father while she was out of town looking for work. During that time, father beat one of the children, a three-year-old girl, into a state of unconsciousness. He eventually became concerned and took the girl and her brother to a hospital emergency room. At the hospital, the children displayed signs of abuse, and father acknowledged that he had struck them in anger. Medical staff attempted to conduct a pelvic exam of the girl, but she became so hysterical that they elected to anesthetize her. While she was under anesthesia, an examination revealed *732“mild bleeding of her genitals” and “significant engorgement of the veins of her rectum.” Father later admitted that he had orally sodomized the girl but denied having anally penetrated her. Father was convicted of criminal mistreatment of both children.
In 1996, the Department of Corrections (DOC) released father to community supervision. Although he had not been convicted of a sexual offense, the department nonetheless characterized him as a “predatory sex offender” based on the girl’s pelvic examination and father’s “extensive history of childhood abuse.”
Along with the “predatory sex offender” designation, DOC required father to submit to a mental health evaluation. Father then met with Cannon, a social worker who conducted a sex offender evaluation. During the evaluation, father backtracked on his earlier admission about sexually touching the three-year old, but he acknowledged that he had “masturbated in [the child’s] presence while in bed with her”; in an earlier polygraph, father had acknowledged that, “in one instance of masturbating in [the child’s] presence he had ejaculated near enough to get semen on her clothing.” Father “seemed surprised” that Cannon considered masturbating in the child’s presence to be sexual abuse.
During the evaluation process with Cannon, father made other disturbing revelations. As part of an autobiography that he completed, father reported engaging in sexual abuse of a four- or five-year-old boy when father was approximately 12. He described his conduct as “forced anal penetration.” Father also described another incident when he was 10 or 11, when he “performed oral sex on a girl who was two or three years of age.”
In her August 1996 evaluation report on father, Cannon explained:
“Even without an admission from [father] that he caused the physical injury to [his girlfriend’s daughter’s] genitalia and rectum there is ample evidence that he is both a physical and sexual risk to children. He is in heavy denial that he has a sexual problem as indicated by his failure to recognize that his exposing himself and masturbating in close proximity to [the child] was abuse or that his sexual *733abuse of two very young children while he was babysitting as a youngster was anything out of the ordinary. His strong tendency to place blame elsewhere and his great efforts at making himself look completely circumspect would make it easy for him to claim that some precocious child was coming on to him if he were allowed to be in close proximity to one. [Father’s] steady diet of pornography and his lack of a regular sexual partner makes the risk even greater.
“For these reasons, I am recommending that [father] be required to enter and successfully complete a sexual offender treatment program. Due to the severe nature of his personality disorder, treatment is likely to be difficult requiring that the therapist be both supportive and confrontive. * * * »
(Emphasis added.)
Based on that recommendation, father began a sex offender treatment program. Father, however, failed to regularly attend the group, and, in February 1998, he violated a condition of his post-prison supervision by viewing child pornography. He was then terminated from the group. In July 1998, father again violated his conditions of post-prison supervision by viewing child pornography on the Internet.
Toward the end of 1998, father began treatment with a different provider, Shannon. During the course of father’s treatment with Shannon, mother agreed to serve as father’s “chaperone” and signed a form stating that she had reviewed father’s sexual history, was aware of his conditions of post-prison supervision, and agreed to be “responsible for not leaving [father] alone unsupervised around any children.” At that time, mother was pregnant with the couple’s first child, K.
In April 1999, father’s post-prison supervision ended, and he immediately discontinued his treatment. Shannon was concerned that father still presented a risk to children, and he contacted father’s parole officer, Bergey. Shannon, aware of mother’s pregnancy, also contacted DHS in advance of the birth. A DHS caseworker showed up at the hospital when K was born in May 1999, and DHS “put a no-contact order in place” that prohibited father from contacting K without Shannon’s permission.
*734Later that year, mother and K moved to Ohio to live with her family. Father joined them shortly thereafter, in January 2000. The parties resided in Ohio for the next 10 years and, during that time, had other children: E was bom in November 2000; C was born in 2002; and S was born in 2006. While in Ohio, the family had “numerous contacts” with child welfare authorities. The precise nature of those contacts is not developed in this record. Child welfare services in Ohio apparently at one point filed a petition for jurisdiction based on the risk that father posed to the children, but that case was later closed. For a period of the time, the children were in the care of their maternal grandmother. The record also includes orders from an Ohio court that allow mother and father visitation rights with respect to C, who was in the custody of her maternal grandmother. There is no evidence that father harmed any of the children during their time in Ohio; indeed, the order allowing father visitation of C does not specify that the visitation must be supervised.
In July 2010, mother and father returned to Oregon, along with K, E, and S. At that time, DHS contacted father to determine whether, during his time in Ohio, he had completed a sex offender treatment program. Father indicated that he had not done so and that he did not plan to do so because “he was not on parole any longer.” DHS then petitioned the juvenile court to take jurisdiction over K, E, and S. DHS alleged that the following conditions and circumstances endangered each child:
• “The child’s mother has exposed the child to unsafe persons, including the child’s father who has a history of sexually offending minor children.”
• “The child’s mother is aware of the child’s father’s risk to minor children, including the child, and failed to protect the child from the child’s father as suggested by child welfare authorities in Oregon and Ohio.”
• “The child’s father has a history of inappropriate sexual contact with minors and such behavior un-remediated endangers the child’s welfare and safety.”
• “The child’s father has disclosed inappropriate sexual contact with minors and failed to complete the sex offender treatment as recommended by child welfare authorities.”
*735At the hearing on the petition, DHS offered the testimony of Shannon, father’s last treatment provider. Shannon, who had not treated father in over a decade, had purged his files and no longer had records of father’s treatment. Shannon was asked to testify based on his memory, as exemplified by this exchange with the court:
“THE COURT: I think the lawyers are trying to be very specific about what you know and don’t know, and what you’re assuming. And I think you’ve indicated to the Court that you don’t remember what the specifics of his offense were, how old the children were, or what relationship—
“[SHANNON]: * * * [Y]es. The — pushing myself to be as accurate as I possibly can and — and remain useful to your hearing, that’s true. I don’t remember the ages of the children and I don’t remember the offending that was specified.
“THE COURT: So in not knowing those things and only knowing that his sex offenses were against minors, can you tell me whether or not sex offender treatment would be required for him to be in remission?
“[SHANNON]: Well, Your Honor, again, the — -the prevailing trend of the therapeutic community would say yes; therapy would increase the likelihood for remission and reduce the likelihood for recidivism. That would be our philosophical position * * *.
“[SHANNON]: * * * I mean, it’s a hypothetical question. And if somebody comes through a treatment program and we have determined that sexually nefarious behavior has occurred and that it’s our recommendation that treatment proceed because of that — which would be designed to place a disorder in remission at that time and to effect an increase in the likelihood that recidivism would not occur.
“If somebody aborts the treatment process prematurely having not completed it, we would not see that as a positive sign. And we would be concerned about the safety of that individual in the presence of minors at that point.
*736“Now, ten years later, I cannot tell you anything about where he’s been, what he has done; if the disorder was placed in remission based on willpower, based on readjustment of a moral position, based on conscience, based on some intervention informally by others who have assisted him to — to not recommit these types of offenses, I just — I can’t tell you anything about that.”
Thus, Shannon’s testimony pertained only to whether he considered father to be a risk to children during the “window of time around the time that [he] worked with him.” He testified that, “[a]t that time, I would have had concerns about his ability to be sexually safe in the presence of minors. I would not have called his probation officer or the caseworker * * * to express my concern if that had not been the case.”
DHS also called Bergey, father’s former parole officer, as a witness. Bergey, like Shannon, had not had contact with father while he was in Ohio. Bergey was asked whether, at the time father’s post-prison supervision expired, he had “an opinion as to whether [father] was at risk to reoffend[.]” He testified, “I would have — I was concerned, based on— based on the history. Based on the failure to get all the way through treatment.” He was later asked whether treatment would have alleviated his concerns about father. He responded,
“It would not have completely alleviated those concerns. From my training and my reading on sex offender crimes, it’s not something that can be cured. It’s something that hopefully can be monitored and controlled while on supervision. And the longer someone gets past supervision and treatment, the more likely is that something could happen again.”
Mother and father also testified at the hearing. Mother testified, among other things, that she had arranged so that father had not had unsupervised contact with the children until “the last two years.” She was asked “what changed in the last two years, in your mind?” She explained that the children are aware of the “issues that their father has had in the past” and, “[w]ell, for one, the kids are older. And two, they — me and them have a very open relationship. They know that they can trust me to tell me.”
*737Father, meanwhile, testified that he had no intent to complete sex offender treatment because he has changed. He testified,
“I — I’ve morally changed from that kid I was 20 years ago. I have a stronger family support network than I did then. I’m aware of more about myself and triggers and to be more vocal. If I’m in a stressful situation of any kind, I leave. I don’t fight, I don’t argue.”
Father added that he had also been in a long-term relationship with mother and that “[a] partner in a relationship makes a huge difference.”
The juvenile court ultimately took jurisdiction over the children, finding that DHS had proved its allegations by a preponderance of the evidence. The court found that father “has a history of inappropriate sexual contact with minors, and that such behavior un-remediated endangers the children’s welfare and safety.” The court relied heavily on the testimony of Shannon and Bergey:
“The information received from the treatment provider and the probation officer do indicate that, while the treatment provider does not have a great recollection of the case, that he was concerned enough about Father not completing the treatment that he made several calls to identify or to warn the probation office, child welfare, and Mom that Dad has not completed what he was ordered to complete, and that he therefore poses a risk to the children.
“While it may be there haven’t been any further acts since that time, the information from the treatment provider is that, as time goes on, the longer you’re away from treatment, the greater the risk actually becomes. That is the only evidence before the Court regarding the risk. And the Court is considering that when determining that a risk still exists. It is a preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt or proof beyond a shadow of a doubt; only a preponderance of the evidence. And I do find the State has met that burden.
“[With respect to allegations] that the child’s father has disclosed inappropriate sexual contact with minors and failed to complete sex offender treatment, as recommended by the child welfare authorities, I do find that this conduct also unremediated endangers the children, both [E] and *738[K], but also [S], given his age of four. And then I’m not only considering the underlying inappropriate behaviors, but then, while in treatment, the use of pornography and how that was a concern in the original evaluation.”
Based on its findings regarding father, the juvenile court also found that mother was aware of the risk that father posed and had failed to protect the children. Of particular note, the court specifically found that mother, until two years before the hearing, herself believed that father posed a risk to the children. The court drew that inference from mother’s efforts to prevent father from having unsupervised time with them, even after the Ohio court had allowed visitation of C without that restriction. The court explained:
“I find that Mom was aware because she continued to provide supervision or chaperone Dad up until two years ago. She was still aware that Father presented a risk, and that’s after these orders from the court in Ohio were imposed. So even after those were imposed, she continued to provide supervision to Dad. I don’t know what it is that made her stop doing that. Whether it was something Dad said or something else that happened. But there’s nothing with regards to treatment that happened, there’s nothing regards to a polygraph that happened, but it is just a decision that Mom made.”
On appeal, mother and father argue that the evidence was legally insufficient to establish jurisdiction over their children. Father “acknowledges that his history is troubling” but contends that his history alone does not “prove, by a preponderance of competent evidence, that father’s children were currently at risk of harm in father and mother’s care[.]” (Emphasis omitted.) That is, father concedes that DHS proved “a troubling history and that he had not completed sex offender treatment,” but he argues that “those facts do not establish that father has not ‘remediated’ his history much less that there was a reasonable likelihood that father would offend against his children.” Mother similarly argues that father’s history alone is not enough to establish a current risk of harm to their children; she further argues that, in any event, “[i]t is unreasonable to assume that Mother * * * was unable to determine that father was in *739remission and able to safely have contact with his own children.” Neither mother nor father suggests that this court should engage in de novo review of the record.1
Nonetheless, the majority concludes that de novo review is required in this case because the juvenile court’s finding that “father’s conduct is unremediated” — the “determinative historical fact that would support the conclusion that the children are in danger as DHS alleged in paragraph 2.C” — finds no support in the record.2 See 248 Or App at 723; id. (“[A]n examination of the testimony at the jurisdictional hearing reveals that both that express finding and any implied finding as to an unremediated condition or disorder lack factual support.”). I disagree with that view of the record and of the trial court’s findings.
The evidence, in my view, was sufficient to establish, consistently with the juvenile court’s conclusion, that at the time father ceased treatment in 1999, his condition was not in remission, he had no inclination to pursue treatment of that condition unless legally compelled to do so, and the condition, not in remission, posed a risk to children left in his care. In other words, at the time that he ceased treatment in 1999, father posed a risk of abusing children.
That brings us to the complicating factor in this case: the 11 years since father ceased treatment. Father contends that, because DHS cannot point to any offending conduct by father over the past decade, the only possible conclusion is *740that father’s condition is in remission and no longer poses a risk of harm to his children. I appreciate that a considerable amount of time has passed since father’s last documented incidence of viewing child pornography or of sexual abuse. But in my view, the passage of time is just one of the multiple facts that the juvenile court must consider when assessing the risk posed by father. A factfinder might infer from the passage of time, as well as father’s and mother’s testimony, that father has overcome whatever caused him to commit acts of abuse against children and that he no longer poses such a risk. I am not convinced, however, that such an inference is compelled on this record. Rather, the evidence supports the finding — again, implicit in the court’s ultimate determination — that father’s condition did not disappear or go into remission after he ceased treatment.
First, father admitted that he did not seek treatment during that intervening period. Second, there is evidence that father’s condition would not simply go into remission on its own. Shannon, a treatment provider with 26 years of counseling experience, testified that “the prevailing trend of the therapeutic community” was that sex offender treatment was required in order for a sex offender to be in remission, and that, if an individual has been recommended treatment “designed to place a disorder in remission at that time and to effect an increase in the likelihood that recidivism would not occur,” the fact that the offender subsequently “aborts the treatment process prematurely having not completed it” would cause concern “about the safety of that individual in the presence of minors at that point.”
Shannon acknowledged, as the majority emphasizes, 248 Or App at 724, 727, the possibility that father’s “disorder [could be] placed in remission based on willpower, based on readjustment of a moral position, based on conscience, based on some intervention informally by others who have assisted him to — to not recommit these types of offenses.”3 And father later testified that, through a change *741in moral position and willpower, as well as a stable relationship, he had overcome his past tendencies to abuse children. But the juvenile court was not required to credit — and, indeed, did not credit — that testimony. Nor was the court required to believe mother’s testimony regarding father’s condition, particularly when, until two years before the family moved back to Oregon, mother herself apparently did not trust father to be alone with the children.
Rather, the juvenile court was entitled to draw different but nonetheless reasonable inferences about the risks posed, even more than 15 years later, by someone who would commit the acts admitted by father. That is, the juvenile court could rely on its own experiences in concluding that father was unlikely to remedy, on his own, whatever significant underlying condition or disorder caused that type of abusive act. See Skeeters v. Skeeters, 237 Or 204, 214, 389 P2d 313 (1964) (factfinding function is “to apply the ordinary experience of [people] to the disputed facts and arrive at the conclusion their reasoning dictates”). The evidence supported an inference that father lacked the insight and desire to address his condition on his own, including the facts that he did not consider masturbating near a child to constitute abuse, that he did not consider sexual abuse of the children he was babysitting to be “anything out of the ordinary,” that he left treatment as soon as he was no longer required to be there under the terms of his post-prison supervision, that his sex offender evaluation indicated a “strong tendency to place blame elsewhere,” and that “the severe nature of his personality disorder” would make even treatment difficult.
Indeed, father’s own history supports an inference that the passage of time, alone, will not alleviate his risk of reoffending. Father has in the past remained a risk to reoffend despite going relatively long periods without abusing; in fact, father’s admitted instances of sexual abuse also were separated by a decade: sodomizing toddlers when he was 11 or 12, and sexually abusing his then-girlfriend’s child when *742he was 21. Even if a “clean record” could, in some circumstances, compel the conclusion that a sexual offender no longer poses a risk of offending, this would not be that case.4
The majority’s other justification for reviewing de novo — that, in reaching its conclusion that father continues to pose a risk of reoffending, the juvenile court impermissibly treated Bergey’s testimony as expert testimony, 248 Or App at 726 — likewise is not persuasive to me. The juvenile court does appear to have blended the testimony of Shannon, father’s treatment provider, and Bergey, his parole officer, when orally recounting the evidence at the close of the hearing:
“While it may be there haven’t been any further acts since that time, the information from the treatment provider is that, as time goes on, the longer you’re away from treatment, the greater the risk actually becomes.”
(Emphasis added.) Bergey, not Shannon, had testified that “[t]he longer someone gets past supervision and treatment, the more likely is that something could happen again.” But, whether or not the juvenile court misspoke in its oral recitation, I am not persuaded that the court misunderstood the evidence of risk or its import. The juvenile court, in its previous sentence, had explained that father “has not completed what he was ordered to complete, and that he therefore poses a risk to the children.” Implicit in that finding is that father’s condition, at the time that he ceased treatment, had not been remedied. The court then paraphrased Bergey’s testimony— unremarkable in the context of someone who still needs treatment — that “the longer you’re away from treatment, the greater the risk actually becomes.”
In short, I would conclude that there is evidence in this record from which the juvenile court could find that father’s “unremediated” conduct poses a current risk to K, E, and S. Father’s previous acts of sexual abuse were committed *743against young children while father was in the role of caretaker. K, E, and S are each young children (ages 11, 9, and 4, respectively, at the time of the hearing) who recently have been left unsupervised in father’s care. There is evidence in the record that father has not remedied whatever caused him to commit that abuse in the past and that he therefore poses a current risk of harm to K, E, and S.
Relatedly, there is sufficient evidence to support the juvenile court’s finding that mother fails to appreciate the risk that father’s condition continues to pose to the children. Mother testified repeatedly that father does not pose any risk to her children;5 that she did not know why father terminated his sex offender treatment, but that it had no impact on her decision to have additional children with him; that she has left the children with him unsupervised over the past two years; and that she effectively trusts K, E, and S to police their father’s sexual conduct and report to her. On those facts, a reasonable trier of fact could conclude, by a preponderance of the evidence, that mother was unable to appreciate the risk that father poses or to protect them from that risk.
In sum, the juvenile court was not convinced that father’s conduct, which posed a risk to young children at the time he left treatment, had since been remedied. Neither am I. Thus, I would defer to the juvenile court’s factual findings and affirm its jurisdictional judgment under either a de novo or “any evidence” standard.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

 ORS 19.415(3)(b) provides that this court “may try the cause anew upon the record.” ORAP 5.40(8) provides guidance as to when this court will exercise de novo review under ORS 19.415(3)(b). ORAP 5.40(8)(a) and (b) state that, when the appellant requests that we exercise our discretion to review a matter de novo, the appellant “shall concisely state the reasons why” this court should exercise its discretion. Because neither parent requested de novo review, there were no concisely stated reasons. ORAP 5.40(8)(c) states that requests for de novo review are disfavored because the court will only review the record anew in exceptional cases, so there is a presumption against this court exercising its discretion to review de novo.

 The majority characterizes the juvenile court’s finding regarding the danger posed by father as a finding that “his inappropriate sexual contact with minors was ‘unremediated,’ in other words, uncorrected or ongoing.” 248 Or App at 722 (emphasis added). The majority conflates the uncorrected behavior with the ongoing risk that father will repeat that behavior. The court did not find that father was actually having ongoing sexual contact with children, but only that the behavior— or, more accurately, whatever caused that behavior — had not been remedied or corrected, thereby creating a risk that it would be repeated.

 Seizing on this acknowledgment, the majority concludes that the “bottom line was that completion of such treatment was not required for father to be ‘in remission.’ ” 248 Or App at 724 (emphasis in original). Shannon’s testimony, read as a whole, paints a very different portrait: that, from a philosophical point of view, the prevailing trend in the therapeutic community is that sex offender treatment is *741required, and an individual’s failure to complete a treatment program is not “a positive sign” and would cause concern “about the safety of that individual in the presence of minors at that point.” Shannon’s allowance for a possible exception to that philosophical position — particularly in the case of someone he had not treated in more than a decade — cannot he read for more than that.

 It is worth noting that father’s time with the children over the past 11 years was almost always supervised. The record suggests that father was only living in the home with the children sporadically; he had a separate residence for the first few years after he arrived in Ohio, and his job as a long-haul truck driver often took him away from the family. Until the last two years, mother had not allowed father to have any unsupervised contact with the children.

 When initially asked whether father presented a risk of harm to her children, mother testified, ‘Well, I think a lot of people can be a risk.” She was later adamant that father was not a risk.