In the Interest of T. W.

Evidence of the mother's pattern of violence toward men supported a finding that her children were deprived.

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The mother of nine-year-old T. W. and infant D. W. appeals from the order of the Juvenile Court of Paulding County finding that the children were deprived, awarding temporary custody to the Georgia Department of Human Resources through the Paulding County Department of Family and Children Services the “Department”, and ordering the Department to prepare a reunification plan. The mother claims that the evidence presented at the deprivation hearing was insufficient to support the juvenile court’s findings. We disagree and affirm. In an appeal from a deprivation order, “we review the evidence from the juvenile court hearings in the light most favorable to the court’s judgment and determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found by clear and convincing evidence that the children were deprived.”1 Viewed in such a light, the evidence shows that the juvenile court entered a shelter care order for T. W . and D. W. on October 14, 2008, after their mother was arrested for shooting a gun at D. W.’s putative father. The mother hit, shot at, and threatened the putative father with a knife in the presence of T. W., and she destroyed the father’s property in the presence of the child while the father hid from her. The putative father also told police that the mother had previously threatened to shoot him at work and that he believed she had slashed his tires.

In addition, the mother had been involved in an altercation with a prior boyfriend in 2007, which also involved a firearm, and she had been convicted of making harassing phone calls to T. W.’s biological father in 2000. Evidence was also presented that the mother once threatened to choke T. W. if the child’s father did not speak to her on the phone and that, on another occasion, she left T. W. on the doorstep of the child’s biological father on a cold night.

In the Interest of T. W.

Evidence of the mother's pattern of violence toward men supported a finding that her children were deprived.

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