JLG, In Interest of

• Decision Date: 04 October 1988
• Docket Number: No. C-88-2,C-88-2
• Citation: 762 P.2d 42
• Parties: In the Interest of JLG and JG, minors. AG and DG, Appellants (Respondents), v. BIG HORN COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND SOCIAL SERVICES, Appellee (Petitioner).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 42

762 P.2d 42

In the Interest of JLG and JG, minors.

AG and DG, Appellants (Respondents), v. BIG HORN COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND SOCIAL SERVICES, Appellee (Petitioner).

No. C-88-2.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

Oct. 4, 1988.

Micheal K. Shoumaker of Shoumaker and Murphy, Sheridan, for appellants.

Joseph B. Meyer, Atty. Gen., Peter J. Mulvaney, Deputy Atty. Gen., and Richard E. Dixon, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY and GOLDEN, JJ.

MACY, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the district court that terminated the parental rights of appellants AG (father) and DG (mother) to their two youngest daughters. Appellants challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to terminate their parental rights and the admission as evidence of a Department of Public Assistance and Social Services (DPASS) file relating to the family.

We affirm.

Appellants were married on January 6, 1983. A daughter (JLG) was born on May 11, 1983, and another daughter (JG) was born on November 14, 1984. The household included these four persons as well as two older daughters of the father from an earlier marriage. In this proceeding, appellants' parental rights to the father's two older daughters were also terminated, but no appeal is taken from that portion of the district court's judgment. We include them in our discussion of this case because testimony from them and about them contributes to our resolution of the issues raised in this appeal.

Although the application of the termination of parental rights statutes is a matter of strict scrutiny, our standard is that, when reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court assumes that the evidence of the prevailing party is true, leaving out of consideration the evidence presented by the other party in conflict therewith and giving every favorable inference to the evidence of the successful party that may fairly and reasonably be drawn from it. TR v. Washakie County Department of Public Assistance and Social Services, 736 P.2d 712 (Wyo.1987).

On February 4, 1985, the father held a gun to his wife's head and threatened her with it in the presence of the children. On October 23, 1985, the father beat his wife in the presence of the two youngest children. As a result of this incident, the children were temporarily removed from the home. However, the domestic violence continued. Just before midnight on November 1, 1985, police were called to the home to investigate a dispute and possible aggravated assault. When the police arrived, the mother was walking away from the trailer park where the family lived. She told the police she was going to the hospital for treatment of a cut she received in a fight with her husband. The police took the mother to the hospital and then returned to the trailer to check on the father. They noticed blood on the front steps, all over the floor in the kitchen, and down the hallway to the bedroom. The father had been stabbed several times with a steak knife by his wife. He had been at the bar earlier that evening. His children had called him twice, and during the second call his wife said she wanted to come down for a drink. Apparently, she went, and, after they arrived back home, the father asked her to fix his lunch for the next day. This precipitated an argument, and the father proceeded to get a sleeping bag so that he could go to sleep on the living room floor because he had to get up at 3:45 a.m. to go to work. The mother then turned up the volume of a portable radio. The father grabbed for the radio, and the mother attacked him and began stabbing him with the steak knife. After the mother left, the older girls helped their father up off the floor, and he went into the bathroom. When he saw all of the blood, he thought his wife had cut her wrists with a razor blade as she had threatened to do on a previous occasion. The children were all in the home during this episode. The children stayed with a neighbor that night, as did the mother. The father returned to the bar after being treated for superficial wounds. The children were placed in emergency shelter care with the neighbor by DPASS workers. They were later placed in foster care with the consent of appellants. We relate this incident in some detail because it typifies the chaotic and menacing environment that characterized this home.

A clinical psychologist who had twenty-eight years of experience working with children prepared a report which concluded that JLG and JG, as well as the older children, were suffering from severe developmental delays and distortions. The developmental and emotional problems were more severe with the older children but posed serious mental health problems for all four children. The psychologist reported that these problems were the result of the circumstances in which the children were raised. Finally, he predicted that the children would be unable to cope with the situation in the home, and he observed that the severity of the condition of the older children underscored the increasing deterioration that could be expected in the younger children with continual exposure to the unhealthy environment in their home.

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