In re November H.

Syllabus

The respondent father appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court terminating his parental rights with respect to his minor child, N, who had previously been adjudicated neglected. The father has been incarcerated for the entirety of N's life, and N was unaware that he was her father until after she was approximately seven years old and in the care of the petitioner, the Commissioner of Children and Families. The father claimed that the trial court made internally inconsistent state- ments regarding his parent-child relationship with N, there was insuffi- cient evidence to support the court's determination that he failed to achieve the requisite degree of personal rehabilitation as would encour- age the belief that within a reasonable time he could assume a responsi- ble position in N's life as required by the applicable statute (§ 17a- 112), the court improperly relied on its finding that additional time was necessary for him to develop a normal and healthy parent-child relationship with N when the petitioner and N's mother interfered with his ability to develop the relationship, and the court improperly com- pared him to N's foster parent in the adjudicatory portion of its deci- sion. Held: 1. The respondent father could not prevail on his claim that the trial court's determination that the petitioner failed to sustain her burden to demon- strate that there was no parent-child relationship between him and N was internally inconsistent with its findings that he did not have a normal and healthy or meaningful parent-child relationship with N; although there was evidence in the record that N's feelings toward her father were continuing and positive, this did not preclude the court's conclusion that the father and N did not share a normal and healthy or meaningful relationship, as the court found that N's mother had prevented the father from maintaining a meaningful relationship with N and that the father's continued incarceration and N's fear of visit