Opinion
June 27, 1994
Appeal from the Family Court, Kings County (Palmer, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed without costs or disbursements.
Contrary to the mother's contentions, the Commissioner of Social Services established, by a preponderance of the evidence, a prima facie case that she had allowed her daughter to be sexually abused.
At a fact-finding hearing before the Family Court, petitioner presented two witnesses, Ms. Gellman, a pediatric nurse practitioner, and Ms. Figueroa, a social worker employed by the Children's Aid Society. Their testimony sustained a prima facie case of permitting sexual abuse.
Once a petitioner in a child abuse case has established a prima facie case, the burden shifts to the respondent to rebut the presumption of parental culpability (see, Matter of Philip M., 82 N.Y.2d 238). The mother's failure to come forward at the fact-finding hearing with any explanation to rebut the presumption of parental culpability justified the Family Court in "draw[ing] the strongest inference against [her] that the opposing evidence in the record permit[ted]" (Matter of Commissioner of Social Servs. v. Philip De G., 59 N.Y.2d 137, 141). Mangano, P.J., Altman, Hart and Florio, JJ., concur.