In the Interest of M.O., Minor Child ( 2022 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 22-1466
Filed November 17, 2022
IN THE INTEREST OF M.O.,
Minor Child,
M.O., Father,
Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cherokee County, David C. Larson,
Judge.
A father appeals the termination of his parental rights to his child.
AFFIRMED.
Dean A. Fankhauser of Vriezelaar, Tigges, Edgington, Bottaro, Boden &
Lessman, L.L.P., for appellant father.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Ellen Ramsey-Kacena, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee State.
Lesley D. Rynell of Juvenile Law Center, Sioux City, attorney and guardian
ad litem for minor child.
Considered by Bower, C.J., and Greer and Badding, JJ.
2
BADDING, Judge.
When this child was two years old, his father killed his mother and unborn
baby sister in a drug-fueled car crash. The father went to prison, and the child was
placed into the guardianship of his maternal grandfather. Close to six years later,
the child was removed from the grandfather’s care. This removal led to the end of
the guardianship and termination of the father’s parental rights. The father
appeals. Though he agrees the statutory grounds for termination were met under
Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(b) and (f) (2022), the father claims termination is
not in the child’s best interests. We disagree on our de novo review of the record.1
The story of the mother’s death was told in an exhibit admitted into evidence
at the hearing to terminate the father’s parental rights. In March 2015,
[w]itnesses said that they saw [the mother’s] Chevy Blazer swerving
all over the road; the windows were down and they could hear [the
father] screaming at her, calling her [derogatory names]. The car
was going 120 miles per hour when it hit a patch of water and began
to skid off the road. It flipped three times before hitting a tree and
finally coming to rest in the swampland at the side of the highway.
A witness saw the father emerge from the wreck, pulling the couple’s two-year-old
child out after him. He left the child by the side of the highway and tried to flee
from the scene. A bystander climbed down to the car and found the mother, who
was nearly nine months pregnant, “crushed under it. . . . She was still alive . . . but
barely.” Once the paramedics arrived, they could not save the mother or her
1 In conducting our de novo review, we “give weight to the [juvenile court’s] factual
findings but are not bound by them.” In re L.B., 970 N.W.2d 311, 313 (Iowa 2022).
While “[w]e generally apply a three-step analysis to review termination of parental
rights,” id., we need only address the step raised by the father on appeal, that
being whether termination is in the child’s best interests. See In re P.L, 778
N.W.2d 33, 40 (Iowa 2010).
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unborn child. The father was determined to have been driving, and his toxicity
screen was positive for alcohol, methamphetamine, marijuana, and synthetic
marijuana. Police later reported the father “was still so high and drunk as they
drove him from the hospital to the police station that he kept laughing and cracking
jokes and telling them to play him his favorite song.”2 The father had a history of
drug and alcohol abuse, and his relationship with the mother was violent until the
end.
The child was placed into the care of his maternal grandfather the night of
the crash. They later moved to Iowa. The father was convicted of vehicular
homicide and sentenced to prison in Louisiana, where the crash occurred, in 2017.
He has had no contact with the child since then. While the father believed he
would be released in early 2023, he acknowledged the child could “not be placed
with [him] immediately” and “there would be a very lengthy transition.”
Since this early trauma in his life, the child has suffered from mental-health
issues and aggressive behavior. Because of the child’s “difficulties with temper
tantrums, meltdowns,” defiance, and opposition, he has bounced from placement
to placement, with none able to manage his behaviors. As a result, the child was
living in a psychiatric medical institute for children (PMIC) at the time of the
termination hearing in July 2022. Although a social worker thought the child
remaining in State custody until he turns eighteen “could be a possibility,” she
pointed out that the child’s psychiatric placement was an opportunity for him to be
2 In his testimony at the termination hearing, the father downplayed his
culpability—denying being intoxicated, arguing with the mother in the vehicle, or
trying to leave the scene of the wreckage.
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“somewhere that people won’t give up on him” and “really work on the immense
amount of trauma that he has been through in his life and work on his mental health
and get to a stable point.” So she was “hopeful that there is an adoptive home out
there” that could provide the child permanency.
With this backdrop in mind, we turn to the father’s best-interests challenge.
In considering whether termination is in a child’s best interests, we “give primary
consideration to the child’s safety, to the best placement for furthering the long-
term nurturing and growth of the child, and to the physical, mental, and emotional
condition and needs of the child.” Iowa Code § 232.116(2).
In this connection, we look to the child’s long-range as well as
immediate interests. Hence we necessarily consider what the future
likely holds for the child if returned to his or her parents. Insight for
this determination can be gained from evidence of the parent’s past
performance, for that performance may be indicative of the quality of
the future care that parent is capable of providing.
In re Dameron, 306 N.W.2d 743, 745 (Iowa 1981).
The father argues termination is not in the child’s best interests because he,
“even though incarcerated, is the only relative for long-term placement for the
minor child.” In support of this argument, he highlights the child’s ongoing
behavioral issues and “multiple failed placements.” The father assumes this
means the child “will never experience a forever home and will remain in foster
care for the remainder of his childhood.” Based on that assumption, the father
maintains the child’s best interests require “allowing the minor child to remain in
foster care” until his presumed release from prison in early 2023, which could be
followed by “the institution of reunification efforts to reunify” the father and child.
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We are not so hopeless for the child’s future, though we acknowledge the
father’s concern that the child’s behavioral and mental-health issues will continue
to serve as obstacles to permanency. Those obstacles, however, are far
outweighed by the impediments to reunification with the father. The goal of the
child’s current placement at a PMIC is to address the child’s trauma and stabilize
his mental health to help with his “out-of-control” behaviors. That goal would be
upended by returning the child to the father, who was the source of the child’s
trauma, not to mention the various circumstances preventing reunification with the
father. Those circumstances include the father’s lack of relationship with the child,
incarceration in a different state, and untreated substance-abuse and domestic-
violence issues.
While the father does not rely on the exception in Iowa Code
section 232.116(3)(d)—which authorizes the court to forgo termination when the
child is placed “for care and treatment and the continuation of the parent-child
relationship is not preventing a permanent family placement for a child”—the
child’s “placement in a PMIC d[oes] not change the termination equation,” given
that the father has no relationship with the child and no prospect for reunification
in the near future. In re S.O., 967 N.W.2d 198, 210 (Iowa Ct. App. 2021); accord
In re J.R. II, No. 12-1239, 2012 WL 4903048, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 17, 2012).
Under these circumstances, we find termination is in the child’s best interests, as
it will best provide for the child’s safety and long-term growth, as well as his
physical, mental, and emotional needs. See Iowa Code § 232.116(2); see also In
re J.B.L., 844 N.W.2d 703, 705–06 (Iowa Ct. App. 2014) (finding termination to be
in child’s best interests where father was incarcerated, had no relationship with the
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child, could not resume care for four to six months at the earliest, and had a history
of criminal behavior and alcohol and substance abuse); see also In re R.R.,
No. 19-1849, 2020 WL 110450, at *1–2 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2020) (rejecting
father’s best-interests argument that “the children should wait for permanency
while he . . . earns release from prison” and concluding termination was in
children’s best interest where father “maintained no relationship with the children
since his incarceration”); In re J.D., No. 19-1457, 2019 WL 5791046, at *3 (Iowa
Ct. App. Nov. 6, 2019) (finding termination to be in child’s best interests where
parent had no relationship with child); In re K.T., No. 16-0204, 2016 WL 2744784,
at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. May 11, 2016) (same).
AFFIRMED.