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Filed 5/2/17 In re K.J. CA4/2
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for
publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication
or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
In re K.J. et al., Persons Coming Under
the Juvenile Court Law.
RIVERSIDE COUNTY DEPARTMENT
OF PUBLIC SOCIAL SERVICES,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
R.J.,
Defendant and Appellant.
E066639
(Super.Ct.No. SWJ1400775)
OPINION
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Riverside County. Timothy F. Freer, Judge.
Affirmed.
Jacob I. Olson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
Gregory P. Priamos, County Counsel, James E. Brown, Guy B. Pittman and
Carole Nunes Fong, Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
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Defendant and appellant R.J. (Father) is the father of K.J., who was two-and-a-half
years old on the date of the challenged order. Father appeals from the juvenile court’s
order declining to return K.J. to him on family maintenance at the 18-month review
hearing held on July 26, 2016. We affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On September 22, 2014, law enforcement and the Riverside County Department of
Public Social Services (DPSS) responded to the home of K.J.’s mother (Mother) after
receiving reports of domestic violence. K.J. was 10 months old. In the home also were
K.J.’s two half siblings, ages two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half.1 Mother was under the
influence of methamphetamine. Mother admitted to using methamphetamine on a daily
basis while she cared for her three children. Mother’s live-in boyfriend had hit her in the
face and choked her earlier in the day, in full view of the children. Mother stated K.J.’s
Father was incarcerated as the result of a domestic violence incident that took place in
February 2014. The social worker took the children into custody. Mother was arrested
for child endangerment and being under the influence.
On September 24, 2014, DPSS filed a petition under Welfare and Institutions
Code section 300.
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Allegations against Father included that he had an extensive violent
criminal history dating back to 2005, with convictions related to domestic violence,

1 Father is not the father of K.J.’s half siblings. Only K.J. is the subject of this
appeal.
2 Section references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code unless otherwise
indicated.
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criminal threats, dissuading a witness, battery, assault with a deadly weapon and drug
possession, and he was currently incarcerated thereby placing K.J. at risk of abuse and
neglect (§ 300, subd. (b)), and that Father’s current incarceration left him unable to
provide K.J. with care and support (§ 300, subd. (g)). A first amended petition filed
December 10, 2014, contained the same allegations.
At the detention hearing held September 25, 2014, the court ordered the children
detained. The court found Father to be K.J.’s presumed father.
The jurisdiction and disposition hearing was held on December 10, 2014. The
court took jurisdiction of K.J., granted Father reunification services, and authorized
Father to have visits with K.J. once he was released from prison in “a month or two.”
The children were placed together in a foster care home.
Father was released from prison on February 16, 2015. He moved in with Mother
and obtained full-time employment. Father reported he was taking medication for
epilepsy and had been diagnosed with ADHD, for which he was not being treated. Father
made multiple telephone calls and left voicemails for the father of one of K.J.’s half
siblings. The other father called Father’s social worker and asked to have Father stop
calling, as he would call at all hours and rant about the other father not getting back his
son. The social worker listened to three voicemails that confirmed this report. On May
22, 2015, Father and Mother met with the social worker and a supervisor about the
progress of the case. Father became very upset when asked about the telephone calls and
stated he had made only two calls. Father demanded to hear the voicemails and became
combative, so that the supervisor had to intervene to get Father to calm down. Father and
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Mother both denied that they had engaged in domestic violence previously. Father stated
he was convicted in February 2014 and spent a year in jail only because he had pled
guilty; if he had gone to trial the charges would have been “thrown out.”
The six-month review hearing was held on July 14, 2015. The court continued
K.J. a dependent of the court and ordered Father to undergo a psychological evaluation.
In September of 2015, K.J. was moved to the home of a maternal aunt and uncle in
Reno. She was doing well there and enjoying Skype visits with Father and Mother. The
uncle reported that Father was always appropriate in his visits with K.J. Father
eventually took part in a psychological evaluation. The doctor recommended caution in
proceeding with reunification, describing Father as having low empathy for others, being
impulsive, irritable and aggressive, and unlikely to change or be amendable to treatment.
The social worker described receiving complaints about Father’s unstable, angry
behaviors from other social workers, clerical staff, the previous foster parents, both
fathers of Mother’s other children, and the receptionist at another psychologist’s office,
and found those complaints to be consistent with Father’s behavior toward the social
worker. The supervising social worker advised her not to meet with Father alone because
of his threatening, angry and intimidating behavior.
In late November 2015, Mother gave birth to another child (C.J.) with Father. The
parents did not inform the social worker, moved to another address, and refused to
cooperate when contacted by DPSS. Father told a social worker that he would “flip the
fuck out” on any law enforcement officer who would come to his home to take the new
baby. “If you guys are going to take my kid away from me, I’ll do what I have to do, I’ll
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go back to prison if necessary.” Although Mother took C.J. out of state for a short time,
the child was eventually detained and placed in foster care.
The maternal aunt and uncle reported difficulties in arranging the usual Skype
calls between the parents and K.J. after December 25, 2015. By January 25, 2016, they
described Father as having “completely gone out of control.” Father was getting into
verbal confrontations with the maternal family, harassing the foster mother at work,
texting her and calling the home repeatedly and at all hours. They were attempting to get
a restraining order against Father. The aunt warned the social worker that Father would
“go off the deep end” if they closed his dependency case. Father told the social worker
he planned to move to North Carolina for a job and that “I am washing my hands of this
case.” Father moved to North Carolina in early March 2016.
Father’s angry and threatening interactions with others continued via long
distance. On May 5, 2016, the maternal aunt who was caring for K.J. told the social
worker that Father had been calling police to conduct welfare checks on K.J. on a weekly
basis. More concerning, Father told the aunt that he was saving his money to pay a
former jail inmate $5,000 to kill the aunt. As a result, the aunt did not feel comfortable
having K.J. in her care and thought she would be better off in a confidential foster home.
On May 10, 2016, Father called the social worker 15 minutes before a scheduled Skype
visit with C.J. Father was very angry about not getting in-person visits and became
progressively angrier. The social worker attempted to calm him down and stated she
needed to arrange for the Skype visit. Father raised his voice further, refused to calm
down, and called the social worker a vulgar name. The social worker did not believe
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C.J., a six-month-old child, would benefit from a Skype visit while Father was so angry
and hostile, so she hung up the phone. Father called back and called the receptionist a
vulgar name. Father was angry with Mother, so he posted explicit photos of her on
Facebook, including her telephone number, and sent them to DPSS. On a Skype visit
with C.J. on May 17, 2016, father became frustrated and called the facilitating social
worker vulgar names, which resulted in the visit being terminated.
The continued 12-month review hearing was held on May 24, 2016. The court
placed K.J. with Mother on family maintenance. The court on its own motion suspended
Father’s visitation, stating, “for the . . . emotional and physical safety of [K.J. and C.J.],
that it’s destructive right now, and that there’s absolutely no benefit for father to have any
visits right now in the state that he’s in.”
The 18-month review hearing was held on July 26, 2016. The court found by a
preponderance of the evidence that the return of K.J. to Father would create a substantial
risk of detriment to her safety, protection and physical well-being. The court terminated
Father’s reunification services and ordered ongoing family maintenance services for
Mother.
This appeal followed.3

3
Father also filed a notice of appeal from the court’s order at this hearing
granting the DPSS petition under section 388 to reduce Father’s visits with C.J. to once a
month. Father did not address the reduction of visits with C.J. in his opening or reply
briefs. Therefore, we do not address these issues.
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DISCUSSION
Father argues insufficient evidence supports the court’s finding that returning K.J.
to Father’s custody could create a substantial risk of detriment, and that she should have
been returned to him on family maintenance.
Section 366.22, subdivision (a), provides in relevant part: “[T]he court shall order
the return of the child to the physical custody of his or her parent or legal guardian unless
the court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the return of the child to his or
her parent or legal guardian would create a substantial risk of detriment to the safety,
protection, or physical or emotional well-being of the child. The social worker shall have
the burden of establishing that detriment. . . . The failure of the parent or legal guardian
to participate regularly and make substantive progress in court-ordered treatment
programs shall be prima facie evidence that return would be detrimental. In making its
determination, the court shall review and consider the social worker’s report and
recommendations and . . . the efforts or progress, or both, demonstrated by the parent.”
“Appellate justices review a respondent court’s decision after a section 366.22
ruling as follows: ‘Evidence sufficient to support the court’s finding “must be
‘reasonable in nature, credible, and of solid value; it must actually be “substantial” proof
of the essentials which the law requires in a particular case.’ ” [Citation.] “Where, as
here, a discretionary power is inherently or by express statute vested in the trial judge, his
or her exercise of that wide discretion must not be disturbed on appeal except on a
showing that the court exercised its discretion in an arbitrary, capricious or patently
absurd manner that resulted in a manifest miscarriage of justice. [Citations.]”
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[Citations.]’ [Citations.] In the presence of substantial evidence, appellate justices are
without the power to reweigh conflicting evidence and alter a dependency court
determination.” (Constance K. v. Superior Court (1998) 61 Cal.App.4th 689, 705.)
In this case, substantial evidence supports the juvenile court’s ruling that returning
K.J. to Father’s care would create a substantial risk of detriment to K.J.’s safety,
protection, or physical or emotional well-being. Although the court had ordered Father to
participate in domestic abuse and anger management services, his extreme and continued
inability to control his anger showed that he had not benefited from these services and
this placed K.J. at substantial risk should she be returned to his care. The record is rife
with instances of Father cursing at and threatening the various people with whom he
came into contact, to the extent that the social workers on more than one occasion
deemed it detrimental for Father to interact with C.J. by Skype. The author of the
psychological evaluation deemed Father unlikely to benefit from services to the extent he
would be able to care for his children, and Father’s subsequent behavior validated that
prediction. Father never demonstrated insight or new skills to assist him in providing
K.J. with a safe and stable home and family life. His failure to successfully participate in
services placed K.J. at risk of physical and emotional harm.
Based on the above, we find that substantial evidence supports the juvenile court’s
finding that the return of K.J. to father’s custody would create a substantial risk of
detriment to her.
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DISPOSITION
The court’s orders are affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
RAMIREZ
P. J.
We concur:
MILLER
J.
FIELDS
J.