Court Opinion

ID: 9916772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-10 17:08:20.21462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:58.926088
License: Public Domain

178                   January 10, 2024                  No. 21

         IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE
                 STATE OF OREGON

                In the Matter of I. O.,
                        a Child.
         DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES,
                Petitioner-Respondent,
                           v.
                         G. O.
                       and D. F.,
                      Appellants.
             Umatilla County Circuit Court
                22JU04548; A180679

   Robert W. Collins, Jr., Judge.
   Submitted August 15, 2023.
   Shannon Storey, Chief Defender, Juvenile Appellate
Section, and Joel C. Duran, Deputy Public Defender, Office
of Public Defense Services, filed the brief for appellant G. O.
   Kristen G. Williams filed the brief for appellant D. F.
   Ellen F. Rosenblum, Attorney General, Benjamin Gutman,
Solicitor General, and Kirsten M. Naito, Assistant Attorney
General, filed the brief for respondent.
  Before Lagesen, Chief Judge, and Hellman, Judge, and
Armstrong, Senior Judge.
   HELLMAN, J.
   Affirmed.
Cite as 330 Or App 178 (2024)   179
180                         Dept. of Human Services v. G. O.

        HELLMAN, J.
         In this juvenile dependency case, mother and father
appeal from the juvenile court’s judgment asserting jurisdic-
tion over their child, IO. We conclude that the juvenile court
did not err in asserting jurisdiction on the bases challenged
on appeal. We further conclude that under the totality of the
circumstances, the juvenile court did not err in asserting
jurisdiction over IO. Accordingly, we affirm.
          Pursuant to ORS 419B.100(1)(c), “the juvenile court
has exclusive original jurisdiction in any case involving a
person who is under 18 years of age” and “[w]hose condition
or circumstances are such as to endanger the welfare of the
person or of others.” Before a juvenile court can take jurisdic-
tion under that statute “ ‘the state must prove, by a prepon-
derance of the evidence, that a child’s welfare is endangered
because, under the totality of the circumstances, there is a
current threat of serious loss or injury to the child that is
reasonably likely to be realized.’ ” Dept. of Human Services
v. T. B.-L., 320 Or App 434, 440, 514 P3d 131 (2022) (quoting
Dept. of Human Services v. K. C. F., 282 Or App 12, 19, 383
P3d 931 (2016)).
         Neither mother nor father requests de novo review.
Thus, with respect to the juvenile court’s determination of
jurisdiction under ORS 419B.100(1)(c), we engage in our
well-established “deferential review” of the juvenile court’s
ruling. Dept. of Human Services v. N. P., 257 Or App 633,
639, 307 P3d 444 (2013). Under that review, “we view the
evidence, as supplemented and buttressed by permissi-
ble derivative inferences, in the light most favorable to the
[juvenile] court’s disposition and assess whether, when so
viewed, the record was legally sufficient to permit that out-
come.” Id. To apply that general standard in practice, we
have established a three-step process. First, we “assume the
correctness of the juvenile court’s explicit findings of histor-
ical fact if these findings are supported by any evidence in
the record.” Id. Next, if the juvenile court did not expressly
make a finding on a disputed factual issue, and if resolving
that factual issue was necessary to the final determination,
we assume that it “implicitly resolved the issue consistently
with that disposition.” Id. at 639-40. Finally, we “assess
Cite as 330 Or App 178 (2024)                            181

whether the combination of [the first two steps], along with
nonspeculative inferences, was legally sufficient to permit
the trial court to determine that ORS 419B.100(1)(c) was
satisfied.” Id. at 640.
         The dependency proceedings at issue in this appeal
stem from an incident that occurred at parents’ home in
July 2022 involving parents’ youngest child, IO, who was
under one year old when the incident occurred. While father
was holding IO, parents became involved in a disagreement,
during which mother attempted to take IO from father and
father grabbed mother’s fingers and bent them backwards
with enough force for mother to believe he was trying to
break them. Father then gave IO to mother and went to a
friend’s house. Mother reported the incident to the police
after father left.
         The next day, mother moved with IO from the apart-
ment that they shared with father into a domestic violence
shelter where they stayed for 29 days, after which mother,
citing safety concerns in the shelter, moved with IO back
into the shared apartment; father stayed with mother and
IO part of the time.
         Father has a history of self-reported “anger issues”
and has engaged in multiple acts of physical violence,
including punching mother in the head during an argu-
ment in 2018, for which he faced an assault charge that
was ultimately dismissed, and assaulting another person
in July 2019, for which he was convicted. In addition, the
juvenile court previously ordered that father complete a bat-
terer’s intervention program (BIP) in connection with prior
dependency cases involving parents’ two older children, and
father was again directed to complete BIP classes as a con-
dition of his probation for the 2019 assault, which he was
required to complete by January 2023. Father had started
the court-ordered BIP more than once but, at the outset of
the dependency proceedings at issue in this case, had not
yet completed the program.
        The Department of Human Services (DHS) filed
for protective custody and filed a dependency petition in
September 2022, after concluding that IO was unsafe due
182                                 Dept. of Human Services v. G. O.

to the patterns of domestic violence in the home and lack of
follow through with services that had been provided to the
family. IO was briefly removed from parents’ care. However,
after a same-day shelter hearing, the juvenile court allowed
for in-home placement, with maternal grandmother as safety
service provider (SSP),1 pending the jurisdictional trial. IO
was returned to parents’ care about a week later and they
cared for him under SSP supervision until the jurisdictional
trial. The SSP did not report issues to DHS during that time
period.
         After a jurisdictional trial, the court took juris-
diction over IO on two bases: that “mother was subjected
to domestic violence by father and * * * is unable to protect
[IO] from exposure to father’s violence,” and that “father has
engaged in a pattern of domestic violence with others with
whom he has had a relationship, he has not successfully
engaged in treatment for his conduct, addressed his violent
behavior[,] or ameliorated this conduct and he is currently
in [a] relationship with [IO]’s mother.” The juvenile court
granted legal custody and guardianship of IO to DHS for
care, placement, and supervision, and directed that IO be
placed at home. Mother and father timely appealed.
          On appeal, mother and father raise separate and
overlapping assignments of error. In mother’s first two assign-
ments of error, she challenges each basis on which the juvenile
court took jurisdiction. We address mother’s challenge to both
bases of jurisdiction because “the allegations and evidence”
regarding mother and father are “closely intertwined” and it
would be inappropriate for the court to “artificially separate
the allegations regarding father from those involving mother
for the first time on appeal to evaluate them independently.”
Dept. of Human Services v. J. J. B., 291 Or App 226, 231-32,
418 P3d 56 (2018). In mother’s third assignment of error, and
father’s sole assignment of error, they argue that the juvenile
court erred in asserting dependency jurisdiction over IO.
        Mother presents a combined argument for her three
separate assignments of error, and from that we understand
     1
       “ ‘Safety service provider’ means a participant in a protective action plan,
initial safety plan, or ongoing safety plan whose actions, assistance, or supervi-
sion help a family in managing safety.” OAR 413-015-0115(66).
Cite as 330 Or App 178 (2024)                             183

mother to challenge each jurisdictional basis on four
grounds: (1) that DHS did not present evidence of a nexus
between the allegedly risk-causing conduct and the harm
to IO; (2) that DHS did not meet its burden to present the
“type, degree, and duration” of the harm in sufficient par-
ticularity; (3) that DHS did not establish that IO was at risk
of serious harm; and (4) that DHS did not meet its burden to
show that the risk of harm to IO was current. Father’s argu-
ments in support of his assignment of error mirror mother’s
arguments. Below, we address mother’s challenge to each
jurisdictional basis in turn, then address parents’ joint chal-
lenge to the juvenile court’s assertion of jurisdiction.
         We start with mother’s challenge to the court’s
exercise of jurisdiction over IO on the basis that “father has
engaged in a pattern of domestic violence with others with
whom he has had a relationship, he has not successfully
engaged in treatment for his conduct, addressed his violent
behavior[,] or ameliorated this conduct and he is currently
in [a] relationship with [IO]’s mother.” Under our standard
of review, the record supports the juvenile court’s determi-
nation that DHS met its burden to prove this allegation. In
addition, for the reasons below, the juvenile court did not err
in asserting jurisdiction on this basis.		
         First, the record contains sufficient evidence to sup-
port a finding that DHS carried its “burden to prove that
there is a nexus connecting” father’s unresolved pattern of
domestic violence and failure to address the pattern by com-
pleting court-ordered treatment or otherwise addressing
the issue, and a risk that IO will be harmed if father contin-
ues to resort to physical violence. Dept. of Human Services
v. C. M., 284 Or App 521, 527, 392 P3d 820 (2017) (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted). Notably, the record
reflects that father continued to engage in acts of physical
violence during the years-long period in which he did not
complete a BIP, had not completed the program at the time
of the hearing, and demonstrated a willingness to place IO
in the middle of his physical confrontations.
         Next, the record supports that DHS met its bur-
den to present evidence of “the type, degree, and duration of
the harm * * * such that exposure to a reasonable likelihood
184                        Dept. of Human Services v. G. O.

of that harm justifies juvenile court jurisdiction.” T. B.-L.,
320 Or App at 440 (internal quotation marks omitted). As
recounted above, there is evidence in the record that father
failed to adequately address his long-standing issues with
physical violence by the time of the jurisdictional hearing,
and that he exhibited a willingness to engage in that vio-
lence while holding IO. That evidence allowed the juvenile
court to determine that there was a nonspeculative and rea-
sonably likely risk that IO would be injured during a future
incident of physical violence by father. Contra id. at 440-41
(finding insufficient evidence of nonspeculative risk of seri-
ous harm to the children where the record did not show that
they “were ever the object of parents’ ‘volatile and/or unsafe’
conduct, or that they were ever in such close proximity to
their parents’ fighting so as to be ‘endangered’ by it”).
         In addition, the record supports the juvenile court’s
determination that, by virtue of father’s actions, IO was
exposed to a risk of serious harm. Id. at 440 (explaining
that to support juvenile court jurisdiction over a child, “the
child must be exposed to danger—i.e., conditions or circum-
stances that involve being threatened with serious loss or
injury” (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)).
The risk of physical violence to a child under one year of
age is a threat of serious harm that supports juvenile court
jurisdiction. See, e.g., Dept. of Human Services v. T. J., 302
Or App 531, 538-39, 462 P3d 315 (2020) (in determining
that the record was sufficient for the juvenile court to take
jurisdiction, highlighting that the child was a “vulnerable
four-month-old infant” who would have no ability to protect
himself from the father’s physical violence).
         Further, the record allowed the court to determine
that father’s parenting deficits created a threat of loss or
injury to IO that was current at the time of the jurisdic-
tional hearing. Dept. of Human Services v. M. F., 294 Or App
688, 699, 432 P3d 1189 (2018); see also Dept. of Human
Services v. S. A. B. O., 291 Or App 88, 99, 417 P3d 555 (2018)
(recognizing that “[our] focus must be on the child’s current
conditions and circumstances and not on some point in the
past” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We have stated
that “[w]hen a parent has participated in some services, yet
Cite as 330 Or App 178 (2024)                                               185

there is concern that the parent has not internalized better
parenting techniques, the dispositive question is not what a
parent believes, but what that parent is likely to do.” Dept
of Human Services v. D. L., 308 Or App 295, 307-08, 479
P3d 1092 (2020), rev den, 367 Or 668 (2021) (internal quota-
tion marks, ellipses, and brackets omitted). In this case, the
jurisdictional basis is not predicated only on father’s pat-
tern of physical violence, but on his failure to take steps to
address the issue or change his behavior, which remained
true at the time of the jurisdictional hearing. K. C. F., 282
Or App at 19 (“Domestic violence between parents poses a
threat to children when it creates a harmful environment
for the children and the offending parent has not partici-
pated in remedial services or changed [their] threatening
behavior.”).
         We further conclude that evidence in the record
allowed the juvenile court to determine that “mother was
subjected to domestic violence by father and * * * [was]
unable to protect [IO] from exposure to father’s violence[,]”
and that the juvenile court did not err in taking jurisdiction
on this basis. The record demonstrates that at the time of
the jurisdictional hearing, mother’s circumstances posed a
nonspeculative and reasonably likely risk that IO would be
seriously injured when she was unable to protect him from
father’s physical violence.
         Specifically, the record allows for a reasonable infer-
ence that mother minimized the July 2022 physical alterca-
tion and that she returned to the shared home and intended
to stay in a relationship with father despite father’s failure
to address his issues with physical violence. The record thus
supports the juvenile court’s determination that there was
“a nexus connecting” mother’s inability to protect IO from
exposure to father’s violence and a risk that, when father
resorted to physical violence during future altercations, IO
would be harmed.2 C. M., 284 Or App at 527. In addition, as

    2
      Although we recognize the protective actions that mother did take, includ-
ing mother’s decision to remove IO from the residence and reside in a domestic
violence shelter for about a month, there is evidence in the record from which the
juvenile court could conclude that those protective actions did not ameliorate the
serious risk to IO’s safety, especially because mother resumed living with father
despite father’s failure to address his history of domestic violence.
186                         Dept. of Human Services v. G. O.

we have already established in our discussion of father’s con-
duct, the record supports that DHS met its burden to pres-
ent evidence of “the type, degree, and duration of the harm”
that IO was reasonably likely to face. T. B.-L., 320 Or App at
440. Further, as we discussed above, it is reasonably likely
that if mother failed to protect IO from father’s violence, IO
would be seriously injured. Id. Finally, based on evidence
in the record as recounted above, the record supports the
juvenile court’s determination that at the time of the juris-
dictional hearing, mother was “unable or unwilling to fully
appreciate the risks posed by” father’s failure to address his
history of domestic violence, and thus, that mother’s circum-
stances placed IO at a current non-speculative risk of harm.
See Dept. of Human Services v. C. A. M., 294 Or App 605,
619, 432 P3d 1175 (2018) (determining that there was a non-
speculative risk of harm to a seven-month-old child where
the mother was “unable or unwilling to fully appreciate the
risks posed by [the] father, and that, as a result, [the] mother
[would] not recognize or respond appropriately to situations
in which [the child] is endangered” (emphasis omitted)); see
also Dept. of Human Services v. K. V., 276 Or App 782, 792-
93, 369 P3d 1231, rev den, 359 Or 667 (2016) (explaining
that “evidence that [the] father did not appreciate the risk
that [the] mother posed to [the child] support[ed] the court’s
finding that [the] father was likely to fail to protect [the
child] from [the] mother” where “there was nothing in the
record to prove that [the] father was prepared to take action
to prevent [the] mother from harming [the child]”).
         In determining that the risk of harm to IO was cur-
rent, we consider the fact that IO lived with parents for over
five months between the July 2022 incident and the juvenile
court asserting dependency jurisdiction, and that within
that period, “no other incidents of violence or concerning
behavior by father were reported.” However, because par-
ents’ interactions with IO were supervised by the court-
ordered SSP, the court was not required to conclude that,
without DHS supervision, the risk of serious loss or injury to
IO would no longer be present.
        Finally, we address mother and father’s assign-
ments of error that challenge the juvenile court’s assertion
Cite as 330 Or App 178 (2024)                               187

of jurisdiction over IO. “We have explained that ‘the key
inquiry in determining whether conditions or circumstances
warrant jurisdiction is whether, under the totality of the cir-
cumstances, there is a reasonable likelihood of harm to the
welfare of the child.’ ” Dept. of Human Services v. A. J. G., 304
Or App 221, 232, 465 P3d 293, rev den, 366 Or 826 (2020)
(quoting Dept. of Human Services v. C. Z., 236 Or App 436,
440, 236 P3d 791 (2010)). Because we find that the juvenile
court did not err in asserting jurisdiction on any specific
basis challenged on appeal, we hold that, under the total-
ity of the circumstances, the juvenile court did not err in
asserting jurisdiction over IO.
         Affirmed.