Los Angeles County v. David H.

Opinion

ROTHSCHILD, Acting P. J. This case involves no risk factors justifying the juvenile court’s orders declaring the children, ages nine and 13, dependents of the court, removing them from their father’s custody and control and restricting him to monitored visits at neutral sites. Accordingly, we reverse the court’s jurisdictional and dispositional orders.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

Two weeks after “Father” and “Mother” signed a mediated custody and parenting plan in their dissolution proceeding, an unidentified person contacted the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and claimed that Father was emotionally abusing the three minor children, Stacey, Daisy and David. After interviewing Father, Mother and the children, the DCFS filed a petition to have the children declared dependents of the court.

The petition, as amended, contained allegations under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300,1 subdivision (a) (risk of “serious physical harm”), subdivision (b) (parent’s failure to protect child from risk of “serious physical harm”) and subdivision (c) (risk of “serious emotional damage”). The court sustained the allegation under subdivision (a) that on prior occasions Father choked Mother and pulled her hair and that once, while speaking to Daisy, Father threatened to kill Mother. With respect to subdivision (b), the court sustained the same allegation of domestic violence contained in subdivision (a) plus allegations that Father “has mental and emotional problems . . . which render[ him] unable to provide regular care of the children” and that Father emotionally abuses his children “by making derogatory statements about their mother which include . . . ‘bitch, hoe [sic] and prostitute.’ ” Each allegation sustained by the court under subdivisions (a) and (b) included the accusation that Father’s conduct “places the children at [716]risk of physical and emotional harm.” The court found insufficient evidence that Father’s name calling, as alleged under subdivision (b), placed the children at risk of “serious emotional damage” under subdivision (c).

After making its jurisdictional findings, the court ordered that Daisy and David be placed with Mother,2 that the children and Father participate in counseling and that Father see a psychiatrist for evaluation if recommended by his therapist.