IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 15-0531
Filed August 5, 2015
IN THE INTEREST OF K.R. and H.L.,
Minor Children,
K.L., Mother,
Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Poweshiek County, Rose Anne
Mefford, District Associate Judge.
A mother appeals a dispositional order prohibiting her from having contact
with her children. AFFIRMED.
Samuel E. Charnetski of Charnetski, Lacina & Clower, L.L.P., Grinnell, for
appellant mother.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Bruce Kempkes, Assistant Attorney
General, and Rebecca Petig, County Attorney, for appellee State.
Misty D. White-Reinier, Grinnell, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor
children.
Considered by Vaitheswaran, P.J., and Potterfield and McDonald, JJ.
2
VAITHESWARAN, P.J.
A mother of two children, born in 2000 and 2002, appeals a district court
dispositional order prohibiting her from having contact with the children.1 She
contends the State failed to prove the order was justified or in the children’s best
interests. On our de novo review, we disagree.
The children were placed in a guardianship with their maternal
grandmother following a child-in-need-of-assistance action that closed in April
2014. The children’s mother and maternal uncle also lived in the home.
Six months later, the Iowa Department of Human Services investigated
allegations of sexual contact between the maternal uncle and one of the children.
The department sought temporary removal of the children. The district court
granted the application and the children were placed in foster care. They were
subsequently adjudicated in need of assistance.
The department afforded the mother supervised visits with the children.
During those visits, the mother gave the children sexually inappropriate letters
and notes from their uncle, as well as other gifts and a cell phone—suspected to
have come from the uncle.
The children’s guardian ad litem filed an emergency motion to stop visits
and a motion to limit visitation. The district court granted the emergency motion
pending a hearing and ordered the mother to have “[n]o [c]ontact whatsoever
with the minor children . . . pending further order of the court.” Following a
1
The mother lists the date of the order as February 3, 2015, but the order is actually
dated March 3, 2015.
3
hearing, the juvenile court prohibited contact between the mother and the
children.2
The district court’s ruling is fully supported by the record. The
grandmother essentially abdicated her responsibilities as guardian and relegated
those responsibilities to the mother. The mother, in turn, refused to protect the
children from the claimed abuser and, indeed, took steps to facilitate the
relationship. She also turned the children against their foster parents.
Significantly, a department employee testified the department was not
obligated to furnish the mother any visitation. The mother’s abuse of this
opportunity warranted curtailment of the visits and of any contact with the
children. See In re D.P., No. 09-0237, 2009 WL 929552, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App.
Apr. 8, 2009); In re J.O., No. 99-1016, 2000 WL 18862, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan.
12, 2000).
We affirm the juvenile court’s no contact order between the mother and
children.
AFFIRMED.
2
The court did not limit the grandmother’s visitation with the children.