A Colorado lawmaker, flanked by aggrieved parents and armed with a petition, staged a protest rally on Thursday, demanding that Colorado’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Monica Márquez ensure that judges overseeing custody disputes adhere to a series of reforms for family court that the legislature passed into law in the past three years.

“What is it going to take? What is it going to take in case after case?” said State Rep. Meg Froelich, a Greenwood Village Democrat, speaking before Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, the home of the Colorado Supreme Court. “Child abuse apparently is not enough. Child rape is not enough. The court system has become a tool, a perpetrator of this abuse. Child fatality isn’t even enough.”

Froelich said lawmakers have done their part to ensure abused children and protective parents are heard when they are embroiled in custody disputes.

But she said the state’s judiciary isn’t following the wishes of the legislature.

Froelich highlighted the case of Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, a mother jailed for opposing reunification therapy between her two youngest sons and their father, now criminally charged with sexually abusing his daughters and physically abusing an older son, as evidence that the state’s judiciary remains mired in poor practice.

Froelich and about 40 others who showed up at the rally marched into the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center after the public presentation to submit a petition to Márquez, demanding that the chief justice act to address what they termed a “public health and safety crisis that affects every judicial district in Colorado.”

The petition includes the signatures of 28 legislators and more than 300 other individuals. It calls on Márquez to consider reconvening a task force on judicial training on domestic violence, issuing a Supreme Court directive or taking judicial disciplinary action.

Also submitted along with the petition were hundreds of pages of testimony taken during legislative hearing highlighting complaints from parents who said they felt victimized by the state’s family court system.

Márquez in a prepared statement said she is reviewing the petition letter and plans to follow-up personally with Froelich.

“We care deeply about the welfare and safety of all who come to our courts, and I acknowledge the pain and frustration of families who have been through contentious custody battles,” Márquez said.

She said a recent judicial task force reviewing domestic violence training for judges had made “substantive and meaningful recommendations.”

“We will meet with the task force members to report on our progress and to seek additional input in prioritizing our work,” she said. 

The jailing of Pickrel-Hawkins, which was disclosed in an investigative report from The Denver Gazette, attracted intense interest throughout the nation, with donors contributing more than $70,000 to help the mother who remains embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband, retired Aurora police Sgt. Michael Hawkins.

Hawkins in court documents has denied the child sexual abuse allegations. He has admitted that in 2018 he held his oldest son, then 18, under water in a pool in Costa Rica until his son feared he would drown. Hawkins has said his PTSD was triggered when his son jumped on him. His son maintains the incident in the pool was retribution after he confronted his father after seeing his father with his hand down the undergarments of his sister one night.

In December 2022, Larimer County’s child protective services staff confirmed Hawkins as having sexually abused a daughter and having physically abused the older son.

Froelich said Larimer County District Court Judge Daniel McDonald’s ruling — sentencing Pickrel-Hawkins to seven weekends in a row at the Larimer County Jail — is an outrage and just the latest of ongoing bad rulings from family court judges in the state she maintains have put children in harm’s way, and even at risk of death. The father is seeking sole custody of the two youngest sons.

A hearing is scheduled on Sept. 12 before McDonald to determine whether the court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair the relationship between the children, now aged 10 and 13, and their father is still appropriate. McDonald has said in a past ruling that he is not persuaded the father committed sexual abuse, despite Larimer County’s child protective staff investigation and issuance of a finding of confirmation.

During Thursday’s rally, Froelich at one point gestured to the nearby state Capitol building, pointing out that for the past three years legislators passed new laws meant to reform family courts in the state. She said lawmakers were motivated to act by child fatalities in Colorado and disclosures of ongoing abuse by parents involved in contentious custody disputes.

The Center for Judicial Excellence has documented 26 child murders of a child by a parent since 2011 in Colorado. Of those, at least seven of the deaths involved a parent with “clear family court involvement” prior to the killing of the child and instances “where safety concerns were ignored.”

“Yet under the veil, the judicial veil, we’re not seeing these laws implemented,” Froelich continued.

Maralee McLean, executive director of the non-profit Mom’s Fight Back, which pushed for the passage of the legislation, said that in the 1990s she staged a similar rally on the steps of the state Capitol. Back then, a national advocate who spoke at the rally called the need for family court reform as like the nation’s civil rights crisis in the 1960s, McLean recalled.

Yet protective parents still are fighting for their rights, she said.

“When is our society going to listen to this problem?” McLean said. “Because it’s bigger than a problem. It’s a tragedy.”

The rally participants included parents who said they had been victimized by a court system that ignored their pleas that their children were being abused by a parent.

Investigations by The Denver Gazette of Colorado’s troubled family court system have highlighted instances of bias and the prominent role of unqualified and sometimes unscrupulous parental evaluators who help guide judges in their custody decisions.

Following those reports, the state legislature cracked down on the use of reunification therapy, passing a new law last year that restricted the use of such therapy.

Reunification therapy often is used by judges to help settle custody disputes. Therapists use reunification tactics and exercises to help deprogram a child’s resistance to a parent. In extreme cases, children have been sent across state lines to attend reunification camps with a parent they reject while they are barred from having any contact at all with the other parent.

The new law, which Froelich sponsored, barred courts from restricting the custody of a parent who is competent, protective and not abusive solely to improve a relationship with the other parent. It prohibits reunification treatment that is predicated on cutting off the relationship between a child and a protective parent the child has a bond with.

Pickrel-Hawkins, 48, has objected to the reunification therapy court-ordered in her case and maintains it is harming her children. She said that following sessions with the Fort Collins reunification therapist Christine Bassett, her children have had uncontrollable outbursts and thoughts of self-harm.

“I want you to understand this isn’t just for my children,” Pickrel-Hawkins said of her opposition to reunification therapy. “These women here, and countless women across our state and our country, worldwide, have been reaching out. We have a problem. This is an epidemic of abuse and injustice that must be stopped.”