In re J.C.
Filed 2/27/12 In re J.C. CA2/8
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts
and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or
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IN
THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND
APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION
EIGHT
In re J.C., A Person Coming
Under the Juvenile Court Law.
B233655
LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT
OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
IVAN M., Sr.,
Defendant and Appellant.
(Los Angeles
County
Super. Ct.
No. CK86863)
APPEAL from
orders of the
County Superior Court.
Debra L. Losnick, Referee.
Affirmed.
Cameryn
Schmidt, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Andrea
Sheridan Ordin, County Counsel, James M. Owens, Assistant County Counsel, and
Navid Nakhjavani, Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
_________________________________
The juvenile dependency court issued jurisdictional
findings to the effect that Ivan M., Sr. (Father) raped and sodomized and
otherwise sexually abused a cohabitant’s eight-year-old daughter, and also
raped the child’s maternal grandmother, in the family home. Based on his established sexually assaultive
conduct, the court further found that Father’s one-year-old son was at risk of
abuse. Father appeals the
finding that he poses a risk to his son.
We affirm.
FACTS
Father and
Maria B. (Mother) are the parents of Ivan M., Jr., born in July 2010. Mother and M.C. are the parents of a girl,
J.C., born in February 2003, and a boy, A.C., born October 2005. At the time the current dependency action
commenced, the children lived in a home with Mother and Father, and with C.P.,
the maternal grandmother.
In early
March 2011, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services
(DCFS) received a referral that Father had sexually abused then eight-year-old
J.C., and that Mother knew about the sexual abuse yet still allowed Father to
live in the family home. DCFS
investigated, and, on March 4, 2011,
filed a petition on behalf of all three children. (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 300.)
On May 17,
2011, at the conclusion of a contested
jurisdictional hearing, the juvenile dependency court sustained the
following alleged counts as to Father and Ivan under Welfare and Institutions
Code section 300, subdivisions (b) (failure to protect), (d) (sexual
abuse) and (j) (abuse of sibling):
“On
prior occasions, [Father] forcibly raped [J.C.] by placing [his]
penis in [her] vagina, inflicting pain to the child. [Father] forcibly sod[o]mized [J.C.] by
placing [his] penis in [her] buttocks, inflicting pain to the child. [Father] fondled [J.C.’s] vagina and
buttocks. [Father] fondled, squeezed,
and licked [J.C.’s] breasts, inflicting pain to the child. [Father] kissed [J.C.’s] mouth. [Father] exposed [his] erect penis to [J.C.] The mother knew of [Father]’s sexual abuse of
[J.C.] and failed to take action to protect [her], in that the mother allowed
[Father] to reside in the . . . home and have access to
[J.C.]. The mother instructed [J.C.] not
to disclose the sexual abuse . . . by [Father]. Such sexual abuse of [J.C.] on the part of
[Father] and the mother’s failure to protect [J.C.] endangers [J.C.’s] physical
health and safety and places [J.C.] and [
siblings [A.C.]
danger, sexual abuse and failure to protect.
“[Mother]
placed the children in a detrimental and endangering home environment in that
the mother allowed [Father] to reside in the children’s home and have unlimited
access to the children, when the mother knew that on numerous prior occasions
[Father] forcibly raped the maternal grandmother, [C.P.], in the children’s
home. Such a detrimental and endangering
home environment established for the child[ren] by the mother endangers [their]
physical health and safety, and places [them] at risk of physical harm, damage
and danger.” (Italics added.)
On
appeal, Father does not contest the juvenile dependency court’s findings to the
extent they include a finding that he engaged in sexually abusive behavior
against J.C. and C.P.
DISCUSSION
Father
contends the juvenile dependency court’s jurisdictional findings must be
reversed for a lack of substantial evidence as to the finding that he poses a
risk to Ivan. More specifically, Father
contends his sexually assaultive conduct upon his cohabitant’s eight-year-old
daughter, and upon her grandmother, do not reasonably support a finding that he
poses a risk of harm to his own, infant son.
We disagree.
The Governing Law
A number of
courts have previously dealt with this same issue and serve to guide our
resolution of the current case.
Accordingly, we provide here a brief overview of those cases to guide
our subsequent analysis.
In
984, the Fourth District Court of Appeal held that a father who sexually abused
a six-month-old boy reasonably could be found to pose a risk of sexual abuse to
the father’s newborn son. (
only by the nature of the abuse, but also by evidence showing that the father
suffered from serious mental
problems. (Id. at p. 987, fn. 3.)
In
177, Division Two of our court held that a father who engaged in “sexual abuse
on multiple occasions” with his 13-year-old daughter, “including asking the
child to orally copulate [him],” inferentially supported a finding that the
father posed a risk to his 9-year-old daughter because it was “reasonable for
the juvenile court to determine that in [the 13-year-old’s] absence, [the
father was] likely to focus on his only other daughter.” (Id.
at pp. 193, 197.)
In
(Karen R.), Division Three of our
court held that a father who has committed two incidents of forcible incestuous
rape of his own daughter when she was 13 years old reasonably could be found
“to be so sexually aberrant” that the siblings of the victim, both male and
female, aged 8 and 6, were at substantial risk of sexual abuse. (Id.
at pp. 88-89.)
In
Division Three of our court held that a father who twice touched his
nine-year-old daughter’s vagina under her clothes and on top of her underwear
reasonably could be found to pose a risk of sexual abuse to the victim’s
younger brothers who “were approaching the age at which father had begun to
abuse [his daughter].” (
In
1405, this Division affirmed findings that a 2-year-old boy was at risk of
sexual abuse where the boy’s father sexually abused the boy’s 12-year-old and
14-year-old half sisters. In affirming
the risk-of-abuse finding as to the father’s son, we noted that the father had
exposed himself to his stepdaughter in his son’s presence, and that the father
had used his son to gain access to his stepdaughter, all of which inferentially
supported a finding that father had no concern for causing his son to witness
aberrant sexual behavior. (
sexual abuse counseling for perpetrators.
(Id. at p. 1415.)
In
48, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that, in the absence of evidence
(e.g., a scientific study) showing that a person who would sexually abuse a
female child is likely to sexually abuse a male child, a finding of such a
likelihood was not supported by substantial evidence unless there was evidence
in the record tending to show the perpetrator had demonstrated an interest in
male children. (Id. at pp. 61-68.)
Analysis
Here, the
juvenile dependency court found, “This particular case is quite
heinous, . . . with who was violated in the home, how they
were violated, the extent to which they were violat[ed], and the fact . . . that
all of these younger children and the grandmother all lived in the same home
with the mother and [Father].” Father’s
arguments do not persuade us to disturb the juvenile dependency court’s
jurisdictional finding of risk to Father’s own infant son.
In our
assessment, Father’s current case most closely fits the Karen R. model (Karen R.,
supra, 95 Cal.App.4th 84) in that Father’s conduct has been “so sexually
aberrant” to support the common sense conclusion that every person in the
family home was at risk of sexual abuse.
Given the opportunities, Father raped the grandmother more than
once. Given the opportunities, he
regularly committed sexually assaultive acts on eight-year-old J.C. The sexual assaults occurred when Mother was
not accessible. The evidence, fairly
summarized, established that Father is an insatiable sexual deviant. Further, that in the absence of Mother, any
person available became an appropriate target.
Father’s arguments on appeal do not persuade us that more evidence was
needed to sustain the lower’s court’s jurisdiction over him and his infant son.
The
evidence showed that, upon receiving the initial referral, DCFS dispatched a social
worker who conducted a series of interviews.
J.C. reported that Father sexually abused her several times, including
forcibly penetrating her vagina and anus with his penis, squeezing and licking
her breasts, and kissing her on the mouth.
The first incident happened when Mother was in the hospital giving birth
to Ivan. Father sexually abused J.C. on
more than one occasion while Mother was taking A.C. to the school bus stop in
the mornings. J.C. said that, during one
incident, Father looked as if he were going to hit her if she did not comply. When she told him that it hurt, he told her
to be quiet.
C.P., the maternal grandmother,
reported that Father had also raped her twice.
The first incident occurred when Maria was pregnant with Ivan; the
second when Mother was in the hospital to deliver Ivan. It was around this time that J.C. told her
that Father had raped her too. The
grandmother confirmed that J.C. had told Mother what Father had done to her and
“none of us said anything because we were afraid that our kids would be taken
away.”
Mother reported that Father had told her that he had a
problem and was going to go to counseling to get help. Father had been arrested and was in
custody. A detective reported to the
social worker that Father had confessed to raping the maternal grandmother and
J.C. When the social worker tried to
interview Father, he said he could not talk for fear of incriminating himself,
but denied he had done anything wrong as to J.C. and C.P.
The full complement of evidence in
this case supports the juvenile dependency court’s conclusion that Father posed
a risk of sexual abuse to his own son.
The record reasonable supports the conclusion that, if given an
opportunity, that is, if left alone, Father would seek sexual gratification
from his infant son.
DISPOSITION
The
juvenile dependency court’s jurisdictional findings and orders issued on
May 17, 2011 are affirmed.
BIGELOW, P. J.
We concur:
FLIER, J.
GRIMES, J.
