Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

If a man has been convicted of rape of a child, can his parental rights be terminated to different children by a different mother? My ex is a convicted pedophile, but we were not able to obtain conviction for his abuse of my children, who are now teens. (It's a long story that includes city officials and law enforcement that were later convicted of child pornography, plus much more). Even though he has not seen them for 9 years now, they still have fear of him, and are both in counseling. They are terrified that he will come back and frankly so am I. He does still pay a small amount of child support, which we would trade in a split second for the peace of knowing that he could no longer disrupt our lives or hurt us. . We do not, however, know where he lives or where he works, though the Attorney General probably has at least the information for where he works since they collect the child support. My children also want my current husband to adopt them. We do not want to wake the sleeping giant unless we are absolutely sure that we have a case. The children plan on having my husband adopt them when they reach the age of 18, but it would give them great peace if we could do it now, and that would be so helpful to their healing process. We live in Texas (under Family Code 161), but the Code is not clear on whether or not the pedophile conviction has to be for the one child or if it can be for any child in order for parental rights to be terminated. Thanks for helping.

Sincere Regards,

Kimberlie Currier

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