In Re Timber M. and Reuben M.

Summary

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia affirmed the termination of Norma G.'s parental rights to Timber M. and Reuben M., rejecting her claims that the Department's procedural missteps denied her due process, that the court should have granted an improvement period, and that less restrictive dispositions were required, because she never acknowledged that leaving her daughter with her sexually abusive stepfather for over four months while extracting his farm constituted abuse. Acting on its own motion even though placement was not an assigned error, the Court vacated the dispositional order insofar as it placed the children with their biological father, Kevin M., whose substantiated sexual-abuse allegations, dismissed indictment, and unexamined fitness left a glaring evidentiary gap, and remanded for a determination and full explanation of the propriety of that placement. It announced a new syllabus point committing the Court to protect children whose custodial placements may endanger them regardless of whether placement is raised on appeal. Justice Workman concurred, defending the new syllabus point; Chief Justice Benjamin concurred in the judgment but dissented to the new syllabus point as overly broad and unfair to non-party Kevin M.