Judge Improperly Ordered Adoption, Appeal Panel Rules

An Orange County Superior Court judge improperly ordered that a 10-year-old girl and her 7-year-old brother be put up for adoption simply because their Tustin mother had a “narcissistic” personality, an appeals court has ruled.

The children were removed from their home 2 1/2 years ago after county social workers found that their mother was a poor housekeeper. The woman, identified in court papers as Doris F., had care of four children, including an 18-year-old son who has AIDS as a result of a blood transfusion.

She eventually cleaned up her home, but Judge Richard F. Toohey ordered that the children could be adopted by their paternal aunt and uncle because a psychologist had found the mother to be “narcissistic” and “self-centered.”

In a scathing opinion, the 4th District Court of Appeal here lambasted Toohey, saying he “abused [his] discretion” in ordering the children to be put up for adoption.

A three-judge panel of the court ordered that the children, who have been living with their aunt and uncle in San Clemente, be returned to their mother.

“The government cannot remove children from their parents because a psychologist opines that a parent is ‘narcissistic,’ ” wrote Presiding Judge David Sills in an opinion released this week. “If narcissism could constitute a basis [for terminating parental rights], the children of many able and important leaders, not only in politics but academia, the arts--and certainly law--would be subject to removal.”

Sills said the psychologist’s descriptions of the woman’s supposed mental problems “at the absolute worst” were “descriptions of eccentricity, not tendencies to harm children.”

Doris F. released a statement through her Irvine attorney, Marsha Faith Levine, describing the panel’s decision as a “miracle” she had prayed for. But she lamented that it took 2 1/2 years to be realized.

“I’m heartbroken so many families are torn apart like this,” the mother said. “The family is a sacred thing and I’ll only be able to recover part of what is lost. Things will never be the same.”

Levine said she hopes that county social workers do not appeal the panel’s decision to the state Supreme Court.

County officials did not return calls seeking comment.

The case began in December 1994 after the 7-year-old boy tripped on a stack of newspapers inside the home and cut his head on an empty soup can, according to the opinion.

County social workers investigating the incident found the home “cluttered and unsanitary,” with a strong odor coming from dirty animal cages of the oldest son’s pets, the opinion states.

Social workers filed a court action to remove three of the children, including the 18-year-old with AIDS. The younger children were placed with the aunt and uncle, but the son with AIDS was returned to the mother.

The county did not seek to remove the fourth child, a teenage boy, because he was not at home when social workers dropped in to investigate the younger boy’s injury, according to Levine.

Meanwhile, Dr. Donald Smith, a court-appointed psychologist who evaluated Doris, submitted a report describing the mother as a “very angry, dolor woman, who appears to feel the lethargy, stress and strain of looking after her children.”

The report added that Doris’ “overall attitude appears marked by her conservative nature” and that “there appears to be an over-concern with interpersonal warmth in her home, which may be an area of difficulty.”

But Smith also noted that the woman did not “harbor any anti-social practices, beliefs and/or propensities.”

By July of 1996--18 months after social workers first visited her home--Doris had managed to improve conditions there, but Toohey, a Juvenile Court judge, still found that returning the two children would be “detrimental” because of the mother’s “narcissistic personality,” the opinion states.

Doris later filed court papers stating that her house had remained clean and safe, that she had taken a parenting class, and that a different psychologist reported that she had no mental problems and was only a “concerned mother who has felt the legal system has treated her unfairly,” according to the opinion.

She has also attended a sexual molestation support group to “help her understand” what her 10-year-old daughter “went through,” when the girl was molested by her father, who no longer lives with the family, according to the opinion.

But Toohey refused to budge, insisting that there was “no change in circumstances.”

Doris and her lawyer, Levine, appealed to the 4th District, which reversed Toohey’s decision.

“It is rare” that an appellate court will reverse such a decision citing “an abuse of discretion, but this is such a case,” Sills wrote.

John L. Dodd, a Tustin lawyer who specializes in appellate law, said the ruling should be a lesson for county social workers that “they cannot run every aspect of people’s lives.”

“They’re not Big Brother. They’re here to protect kids from danger, not to jerk them away from their parents.”