A Colorado mother avoided further time in jail after her lawyer argued that the court-ordered reunification therapy the mother opposes between her youngest sons and her criminally charged ex-husband was being conducted by a therapist who had a history of tragic, deadly consequences for another mother whose two children were murdered.

After a contentious, two-hour hearing, Larimer County District Court Judge Daniel McDonald on Thursday ruled that Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins would not have to spend five additional weekends in the Larimer County Jail and suspended her sentence.

The judge also halted any additional reunification therapy sessions between her children, aged 10 and 13, and their father until the resolution of the criminal case pending against the father.

Douglas County prosecutors filed criminal charges against the father in July, weeks after McDonald ordered the mother to spend seven weekends in jail for thwarting the court-ordered reunification therapy. McDonald said the pending criminal case meant circumstances had changed and caused him to reconsider his earlier jail sentence.

“It does at least allow for an understanding of the contemptuous behavior,” the judge said when he announced he was doing away with the mother’s remaining jail sentence.

The father, retired Aurora police Sgt. Michael Hawkins, faces seven felony counts of child sexual abuse, including the alleged 2012 rape of his daughter when she was elementary school age, and a misdemeanor count of physical child abuse. Hawkins has denied any sexual abuse of his three daughters, including two whom he adopted. His lawyer contends the mother lacks credibility and is “highly manipulative.”

During Thursday’s hearing, the mother’s new legal team, hired after donors raised more than $70,000 to assist Pickrel-Hawkins, pointed to reunification therapist Christine Bassett’s past therapeutic relationship with another couple as a warning sign.

The mother’s lawyer said Bassett previously had bungled the counseling of Adam Zipperer and Erica Bethel on how to co-parent their two young children. On Dec. 3, 2022, Zipperer, 36, murdered his children Cameron Lynn Zipperer, 8, and Audrey Jane Zipperer, 6, before he killed himself.

“She encouraged Erica Bethel to trust their children’s father, trust him, reintegrate the children with him,” said the lawyer, Heather Broxterman, during the hearing. “Then the second he had unsupervised time, the children were murdered by their father. My question goes to whether or not her judgments about parents in a reintegration therapy setting are trustworthy or dangerous.”

McDonald barred the lawyer from specifically questioning Bassett about her therapy sessions with Bethel and Zipperer, ruling that therapists have protections that allow them to avoid testifying about their clients unless those clients sign release disclosures. Still, he allowed the lawyer to ask generally about Bassett’s therapy practice.

“Miss Bassett, have you ever misjudged the safety of a parent?” the lawyer asked.

“I’m sure that that’s probably happened,” answered Bassett, whose personal lawyer also attended Thursday’s hearing.

The dispute over the reunification therapy that resulted in a jail sentence for Pickrel-Hawkins occurs at a time when such therapy has drawn criticism from state lawmakers, who passed new laws seeking to restrict its use. Prodded in part by investigative reports by The Denver Gazette, legislators three years in a row have passed family court reform legislation.

Reunification therapists use exercises and techniques to deprogram a child’s resistance to a parent. In extreme cases, children have been sent across state lines to attend reunification camps with parents they are rejecting while they are barred from having any contact with another parent.

Under the law that state lawmakers passed last year, reunification therapy cannot be used to restrict the parenting time of a protective parent who is not abusive solely to repair the relationship with an estranged parent.

Pia Jansen, the personal therapist for Pickrel-Hawkins’ two youngest children, testified during the hearing that the reunification therapy at Bassett’s Lighthouse Christian Counseling in Fort Collins with their father was harming the two children.

“They are upset that their mom has to go to jail,” Jansen said. “They are upset that they have to go see Miss Bassett again. They’re upset that nothing is on their terms. They’re upset that they’re not being heard.”

Jansen testified that the youngest son had expressed in writing during one recent therapy session that he was considering killing himself over the stress of the reunification therapy. She said she fears he would follow through with the threat if the court-ordered reunification therapy continued.

Their father has ceded custody of his daughter, now 17, who accused him of rape, to their mother, along with his oldest son, now 19, who accuses him of almost drowning him in a pool in Costa Rica in 2018. But the father has sought sole custody of his two youngest sons and has drawn the support of the reunification therapist in that effort.

Bassett, the reunification therapist, testified on Thursday that she thought Hawkins was making “incredible” progress during the reunification therapy sessions with his sons.

“He has taken all of the input that I’ve given him and handled it well,” she testified.

Hawkins’ lawyer, Christopher Estoll, argued the mother was to blame for the children’s fears and despair, not the father.

“What actions did you take to help them heal and to support a relationship with their father?” Estoll asked Pickrel-Hawkins at one juncture.

“They began weekly therapy,” she testified. “I enrolled them in a school for their social development. I took them to appointments they needed. I tucked them in at night. I listened to them. I comforted them. I loved them. I protected them.”

McDonald, before announcing his ruling suspending the reunification sessions and jail sentence for the mother, noted that Thursday’s hearing had drawn more attention than any other court hearing he had been involved in.

News of the mother’s jailing, disclosed by The Denver Gazette, generated a national outcry. On Thursday, many court reform advocates signed on to attend the hearing by virtual Webex — so many that the judge feared at one point that it was preventing a witness from signing up to testify virtually. That witness eventually testified through the use of a cell phone.

McDonald noted that his handling of the case also has generated intense criticism from state legislators, who held a protest rally before the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, home of the Colorado Supreme Court. Still, he defended his earlier ruling and said he had adhered to the U.S. Constitution in upholding legal protections for the father.

He said only hearsay statements previously had connected the father to any allegations of child sexual abuse.

When McDonald originally sentenced the mother to jail in July and ordered reunification therapy to continue, Larimer County’s child-protective services had investigated and confirmed that the father had sexually abused his daughter and had physically abused his older son.

The daughter told a forensic interviewer her father raped her in 2012. The son contended his father almost drowned him in a pool in Costa Rica in 2018 as retaliation for the son confronting his father after he saw him with his hand down his sister’s undergarments. Hawkins said the incident in the pool happened when his son jumped on his back, triggering the father’s PTSD and denied that the incident had anything to do with alleged sexual abuse of the daughter.

“The rules of evidence are designed to allow only evidence that is inherently reliable,” McDonald said.

“I will continue to apply the facts presented in open court to the laws that exist, regardless of the number of threats to my safety that I receive,” he concluded.