Background
In January 2025, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) initiated child protective proceedings after a four-year-old girl, JS, was examined by a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE). During the examination, JS disclosed that her father (respondent) bathed her daily and touched her clitoral area with bare fingers during those baths, demonstrating the conduct to the examiner. JS also tested positive for a urinary tract infection. Her mother reported that JS had recently begun suffering night terrors, sleepwalking, behavioral regression, and genital irritation, and that these changes coincided with respondent sending JS home without underwear and with respondent having expressed sexual attraction to JS’s minor half-sister.
DHHS petitioned for termination of respondent’s parental rights at initial disposition. Following an adjudication bench trial, the trial court assumed jurisdiction over JS. A two-day dispositional and termination hearing followed, at which respondent’s siblings testified to a strong parent-child bond and suggested JS had misunderstood the bathing situation. Respondent himself admitted to the touching JS described but denied any sexual purpose, claiming the baths were necessary for hygiene due to bathroom accidents. He also acknowledged having admitted to others that he was sexually attracted to JS’s half-sister while she was still a minor.
The Branch Circuit Court, Family Division, found statutory grounds for termination proved by clear and convincing evidence under MCL 712A.19b(3)(b)(i) (sexual abuse causing likely future harm) and MCL 712A.19b(3)(k)(ii) (criminal sexual conduct involving penetration or assault with intent to penetrate). The court also found termination to be in JS’s best interests and entered a termination order. Respondent appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s finding that statutory grounds for termination existed under MCL 712A.19b(3)(b)(i). The panel held that the record — including JS’s detailed disclosures to the SANE, the implausibility of respondent’s hygiene justification given JS’s toilet-training history, and respondent’s admitted sexual attraction to JS’s minor half-sister — provided clear and convincing evidence both that respondent had sexually abused JS and that there was a reasonable likelihood of future abuse if JS were returned to his home. The court found no clear error in the trial court’s credibility determinations.
However, the panel vacated the trial court’s best-interests determination and remanded for a new hearing. The court found the trial court’s best-interests analysis critically deficient: the lower court’s entire finding consisted of a single statement that JS’s “safety and security” warranted termination, without any explicit consideration of JS’s placement with her mother as a relative or how that placement weighed against termination — a factor Michigan courts have consistently held must be expressly addressed. The trial court also failed to meaningfully engage with evidence concerning the parent-child bond, respondent’s parenting history, visitation, and mental health.
Because the trial court’s findings were too sparse to permit meaningful appellate review, the Court of Appeals ordered a new best-interests hearing limited to that issue, directed respondent to initiate remand proceedings within 21 days, and retained jurisdiction over the appeal pending the outcome.
Key Takeaways
- Clear and convincing evidence of sexual abuse under MCL 712A.19b(3)(b)(i) can rest on a child’s detailed disclosures to a SANE even without corroborating physical injury, particularly when the parent’s offered innocent explanation is contradicted by other witnesses.
- A parent’s expressed sexual attraction to one child in the household is probative of the risk of future abuse to another child and can support the “reasonable likelihood of future harm” element for termination.
- Michigan trial courts must expressly address a child’s placement with a relative — including a non-respondent parent — as a factor weighing against termination when conducting a best-interests analysis; a conclusory safety-and-security finding is legally insufficient.
- Failure to address relative placement and other statutorily relevant best-interests factors renders the factual record inadequate for appellate review and requires vacatur and remand, even where the statutory grounds for termination are otherwise solid.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a well-established but frequently litigated requirement in Michigan termination proceedings: trial courts must go beyond a general finding that termination is “safe” and must explicitly weigh the child’s existing relative placement — including placement with a non-respondent parent — against the finality of termination. The opinion follows a line of recent unpublished decisions, including In re CJM (Docket No. 367565) and In re Mota, 334 Mich App 300 (2020), making clear that this is a hard procedural floor, not a discretionary consideration.
For practitioners, the case illustrates that even a strong evidentiary record supporting statutory grounds will not save a termination order if the best-interests analysis is cursory. Trial courts handling termination-at-initial-disposition petitions — where the procedural pace is especially compressed — should be particularly attentive to building a complete best-interests record that explicitly addresses each relevant factor, including relative placement, parent-child bond, and parenting capacity evidence introduced at the hearing.