In the Interest of M.D., Minor Child

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: May 24, 2023
• Docket: 23-0536
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-0536 Filed May 24, 2023

IN THE INTEREST OF M.D., Minor Child,

V.W., Mother, Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Cheryl Traum, District

Associate Judge.

A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights. AFFIRMED.

Barbara E. Maness of Kimball-Stevenson House, Davenport, for appellant

mother.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Mary A. Triick, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Jean Capdevila, Davenport, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child.

Considered by Schumacher, P.J., and Chicchelly and Buller, JJ. 2

BULLER, Judge.

The juvenile court terminated the mother’s parental rights to this child (born

in 2022) on six separate statutory grounds, and the mother appeals. Finding clear

and convincing evidence of at least one statutory ground, we affirm the termination.

As the juvenile court noted, this family has a lengthy history with the trial

courts and the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), pre-dating

the birth of the child at issue in this appeal. Child-in-need-of-assistance (CINA)

cases and termination proceedings relating to other children were litigated from

2018 to 2021, prompted at first by concerns related to the mother’s medical abuse

or neglect of her children.

Our court also previously decided cases related to this mother and her older

children. In 2020, a panel of our court reversed termination of the mother’s

parental rights, finding the State failed to prove either that the children could not

be returned to the mother’s custody or that the basis for the CINA adjudication

persisted. In re T.W., No. 20-1161, 2020 WL 7022390, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App. Nov.

30, 2020). The core of the factual allegation in that case was that the mother

provided false and exaggerated information about one or both of her children,

perpetrating what was once known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and is

now referred to as factitious disorder imposed on another. Id. at *2. In other words,

the mother was inventing or exaggerating medical conditions and subjecting the

children to unnecessary tests and treatment.

Tragically, two months after our court’s panel decision in T.W., one of the

children was fatally injured by the mother’s paramour, who is the father of the child

at issue in this appeal. The facts of that abuse are recounted fully in a February 3

2023 decision of our court, which affirmed the termination of parental rights for one

of the mother’s surviving children. See In re B.W., No. 23-0002, 2023 WL

2148767, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App., Feb. 22, 2023). Suffice to say, the paramour

(through either neglect or overt abuse) inflicted numerous serious injuries on the

male child, including broken bones, burns to his mouth and nose, injuries to his

anus and genitalia, and fractures to his skull. Id. The paramour was convicted of

neglect of a dependent person resulting in death by an Indiana court, and he was

sentenced to thirty-two years in prison. Id. We affirmed termination of the mother’s

rights to B.W. for four reasons: because the mother was dishonest with her

therapist regarding the child’s death, because she remained “oblivious” to risks

posed to her children given her poor protective capacities, because her tendency

to expose children to unnecessary medical interventions persisted, and because

she “struggled to form a bond” with the child. See id.

The record developed in this termination proceeding convinced the juvenile

court that these same concerns had not abated and warranted termination of the

mother’s rights to this child under Iowa Code section 232.116(1), paragraphs (d),

(e), (g), (h), (i), and (n) (2022). On our de novo review, we may affirm if any one

of these grounds was proven by clear and convincing evidence. In re A.B., 815

N.W.2d 764, 774 (Iowa 2012). We dispose of the appeal by applying

paragraph (h), for which the mother contests a single element: whether the child

could be returned to her custody “at the present time.” Iowa Code

§ 232.116(1)(h)(4); see In re A.M., 843 N.W.2d 100, 111 (Iowa 2014) (recognizing

“at the present time” means at the time of the termination hearing). 4

In reviewing this record, we credit and are persuaded by the credibility

findings and observations of the juvenile court. See A.M., 843 N.W.2d at 110. The

court found that, based on its observations of the mother “in each court hearing,”

the mother showed little empathy for the children and only expressed emotion

“during testimony about [the paramour’s] prison sentence” and when things

otherwise “affected her, not her children.” The court also noted that, even as of

the termination hearing, the mother had not fully accepted that her paramour killed

her older child or that her decision to allow him to care for the child played a role

in the death.

The juvenile court’s observations of the mother’s cold indifference are

supported by the record evidence. For example, while the mother claimed that

she dropped to the ground upon news of her child’s fatal injuries, the social workers

in Indiana reported that the mother spent much of her time at the hospital on her

cell phone and showed very little emotion. At the termination trial, when discussing

her older child’s fatal injuries, she described taking the child off life support as

“pulling the plug,” rather than the emotional experience of a parent deciding end-

of-life treatment.

In the months leading up to termination, the mother repeatedly

demonstrated she still lacks basic parenting skills. She required prompting to tend

to her crying child, and she demonstrated no meaningful bond with the child. She

refused to cooperate with HHS’s requests for the identity of her multiple paramours

or associates (including the identity of the father she recently conceived with),

which has prevented background checks necessary to ensure the child is not

exposed to dangerous individuals. Even after one year of therapy, the mother 5

failed to disclose the facts surrounding the death of B.W. to her therapist, which

highlights her failure to recognize that her parenting choices can have fatal

consequences for the children in her care. At the time of termination, she had

discontinued counseling and essentially all other services. Finally, the mother

remains deceitful and dishonest, as evidenced by her lying about whether her child

had vomited, pricking her child’s finger for blood when the provider was briefly

distracted, and continuing to debate the merits of her factitious-disorder diagnosis

rather than work to improve her parenting skills.

In sum, we agree with the HHS worker’s testimony, well-grounded in her

work with this family, that the mother’s “ability to protect her children . . . has not

improved through this service case. It has gotten worse, actually.” In light of the

evidence discussed in this opinion and the deference we owe to the juvenile court’s

credibility determinations, we fully adopt the juvenile court’s finding that the child

“still cannot be left with the mother outside of close and constant supervision.” This

finding defeats the mother’s challenge on appeal and ends our analysis. The State

met its burden under section 232.116(1)(h), and we affirm the termination of

parental rights, consistent with our recent decision in B.W., 2023 WL 2148767, at

*2–3 (applying section 232.116(1)(f)—the analogous provision for older children).

AFFIRMED.