EVIDENCE — WITNESS COMPETENCE — ABUSED, NEGLECTED, TROUBLED, IMMATURE TEEN — CHILD’S POWER TO BLOCK PARENTAL RIGHTS TERMINATION. The Court of Appeals upholds the decision that a 13-year-old is incompetent to testify in a parental rights termination case, and lists several things about this teenager that diminished her competence: she is a victim of sexual and physical abuse and neglect, and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. She “lacks problem solving skills, has low intelligence, has the moral age of a 5 or 6 year old, reads on a third-grade level, has poor attention to detail, is impulsive and fears for her own safety.” Since the mother was the appellant, presumably she was the one who called the child to testify. For the same reasons, the Court says the child does not qualify to block the termination under Code §16.1-283 G, which gives that power to a child who is 14 or over and not disabled, or is “otherwise of an age of discretion as determined by the trial court.” Donahue v. Roanoke City Department of Social Services, unpublished, 25 VLW 726 (Court of Appeals 11/9/10).