This is an appeal brought pro se by the child’s natural father and legal custodian,1 a Georgia prisoner, from a final deprivation order of the Juvenile Court of Fulton County. The father appears to contend that the juvenile court’s order was void for want of subject matter jurisdiction and denial of his constitutional right to due process by not securing his presence at the deprivation hearing. The record shows that upon receiving notice of the deprivation proceedings in issue, the father requested that arrangements be made to enable him to appear personally and that counsel be appointed to represent him. Because he nonetheless was not afforded an opportunity to be heard, we reverse and remand with direction. The record shows that the Department of Human Resources was granted temporary legal custody of the child upon a 2001 juvenile court order finding the child deprived for child molestation by the legal custodian father. The father was later convicted of two counts of aggravated child molestation and one count of child molestation and sentenced to fifty years confinement. The Department filed the instant deprivation petition on October 15, 2003, among other things, seeking renewed temporary custody of the child, an earlier order of the juvenile court placing the child in the temporary legal custody of the Department having expired.2 The juvenile court conducted its deprivation hearing on the petition on October 24, 2003. Given notice of the proceeding at Hays State Prison, the father by letter to the Department’s attorney, dated October 21, 2003, and filed October 30, 2003, made his requests to appear personally and for the appointment of counsel to represent him. Although the mother had also been noticed, neither the mother nor the father appeared at the deprivation hearing.
The juvenile court appointed counsel for the father in early November, 2003. At its in-court review of the case on December 8, 2003, at which the father and counsel for the father were present,3 the juvenile court accepted the Department’s case plan aimed at the eventual reunification of the child with the mother. On January 13, 2004, the juvenile court entered its order upon the October 24 deprivation hearing finding the child deprived and again placed temporary legal custody of the child in the Department. By the order complained of, entered contemporaneously, the juvenile court made the foregoing order its final judgment and scheduled a hearing in February of 2004 upon the Department’s motion for nonreunification and permanency. Held :
