Armed with a survey of parents who lambasted family court judges and magistrates for regularly ignoring signs of child abuse during custody disputes, legislators and court reform advocates are pressing for new domestic violence training mandates and other measures for judges and magistrates.

“This document brings to light the voices of Colorado citizens who have experienced firsthand the devastating impact of a broken system,” according to an executive summary of the survey State Rep. Meg Froelich, D-Greenwood Village, shared last month with Monica Márquez, the chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.

“Through citizen survey data, it reveals how children’s disclosures of abuse are often ignored, protective parents are silenced by legal and financial intimidation and judicial professionals dismiss credible evidence to force contact with abusive parents,” the executive summary further stated.

The impetus for the survey stemmed from disclosures in The Denver Gazette over the jailing of Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy between her two youngest sons, aged 10 and 13, and her ex, who was accused of sexually abusing his three daughters and who had admitted to almost drowning an older son in a pool.

After Larimer County District Court Judge Daniel McDonald ordered that mother to spend seven consecutive weekends in jail for resisting the reunification therapy, her ex, retired Aurora police Sgt. Michael Hawkins, was charged with seven felony counts of child sex abuse and a misdemeanor count of physical child abuse.

The judge backtracked and dismissed the mother’s jail sentence in the face of widespread criticism across the nation following reports in The Denver Gazette about the jailing of the mother. Michael Hawkins claims he is innocent of the criminal charges.

The surveyors collected statements from more than 250 individuals who signed a petition expressing displeasure with how judges handled their child custody disputes. An analyst reviewed those statements for patterns and then broke down those patterns into statistical analysis.

Among the findings:

Nearly 70% of cases where a child was listed as a protected party on a criminal protection order involved a judge removing that child from the order to allow contact with an abusive parent.

In more than 90% of cases where a parent was criminally charged for child abuse or neglect and the child disclosed abuse in forensic interviews, the family court judge still removed the child from a criminal protection order to force parenting time.

Nearly half of the cases surveyed involved one parent having criminal charges while the other parent had their parenting time either supervised, restricted or reduced to no parenting time at all.

In slightly more than 20% of the cases in which a parent had been criminally charged, the criminally charged parent accused the other parent of parental alienation. Protective parents have argued the theory of parental alienation, which holds that some parents deliberately turn their children against their other parents during custody disputes, has been used disproportionally to restrict their parenting time when they’ve raised valid concerns of abuse.

Froelich met in mid-October with Márquez at the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center, home of the Colorado Supreme Court, to go over the survey results and discuss potential ways to address the concerns of court reform advocates.

“We’re working on getting people informed on how the child’s safety has to be the pre-eminent concern,” Froelich said, adding that judges should not be lifting restraining orders to facilitate contact between an abusive parent and a child.

“That should never happen,” Froelich said.

Froelich and reform advocates also have pointed to sobering death statistics collected by The Center for Judicial Excellence, a nonprofit group that advocates family court reform. That group reports that at least 30 children in Colorado have been murdered by a separating or divorcing parent involved in a family court proceeding since 2010.

A judicial training task force, created by the legislature, in a February report found that family court judges and magistrates are not required to undergo training on domestic violence and child abuse. Judges must every three years take classes on equity, diversity and inclusivity as well as on legal ethics or legal professionalism while having broad discretion to choose other areas of interest to fulfill their training obligations, according to the report.

The task force referenced a 2023 survey of attorneys, mental health professionals and financial professionals who appear in family court proceedings who reported they found judges lacking in their knowledge of child custody issues, child maltreatment and domestic violence.

Judges need to become sensitive to the impact trauma can have on victims, who experience loss of memory, may have difficulty remembering details and may act differently in court than expected, the task force said in the report.

The task force recommended that the judiciary consider bolstering training on a host of issues that arise in family court, ranging from the impact of domestic violence on children, the role courts can have in protecting child victims, domestic violence lethality factors as well as the neurobiology of trauma and the presentation of victim dynamics. It said further study should be conducted on how Ohio has embarked on an educational initiative on domestic violence dynamics for its judges.

“Within the context of domestic violence relationships, Colorado judicial officers make findings of domestic violence but do not find the behavior is likely to continue,” the task force further reported. “There is a common misconception that children are in less danger once a couple is no longer living together.”

Froelich said she believes the chief justice “genuinely wants to see movement in this area” as does Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. Weiser is working on a new training regimen for court-appointed professionals that make custody recommendations in custody disputes, and a report his office released suggested such standardized training also could be expanded to judges overseeing those cases.

Márquez said in a prepared statement that the judiciary is is in the process of implementing the task force’s recommendations and also is “exploring enhancements to our onboarding for new judges on these topics and others.” She said new judicial education subcommittees are working on improving training for judges and magistrates on domestic violence and domestic relations. In addition, the judiciary is in discussions with the Colorado Attorney General on ways to improve the training for court-appointed parenting evaluators who make custody recommendations, she said.

“Those discussions are in their early stages, but we see value in pooling our expertise to develop a robust, uniform training for these professionals,” Márquez said.

Also attending the meeting with Froelich were Christine McGinley, the person who did the statistical analysis for the survey; Maralee McLean, executive director of the nonprofit Mom’s Fight Back; and Jaime Watman, the coordinator of the roster of parental evaluators eligible for court appointments in custody disputes.

McGinley said that while the survey is not conducted by academics or a comprehensive, randomly selected sample of participants in family court, it still has validity.

“The whole point is to give people who have been silenced and live in fear and have suffered tremendously a way to add their voice to the issues in hopes of reform,” McGinley said.

A volunteer group called Project Justice Colorado conducted the survey, collecting anonymous statements, which were then winnowed to about 188 individual accounts for actual statistical analysis, McGinley said.

One participant reported that her ex, who himself told police he should not be allowed to be alone with his children, still secured unsupervised parenting time with his children despite wielding a rifle in the presence of the children in one incident and brutally assaulting a total stranger in front of the children in another incident.

“My children have been subjected to tremendous fear and lack of safety, but also the violation of trust by professionals when they are ordered back into the unsupervised care of a mentally ill individual,” that survey participant reported.

Another mother reported that police bungled the testing of a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner kit collected from her two-year-old daughter amid allegations of child sexual abuse by her ex. Years later, the kit finally was tested, revealing the presence of semen, but her ex still had an “odd explanation” ready, she reported. The criminal charges were dropped, and her ex-husband picked up their daughter that same day for his 50% parenting time.

“Had I known, 13 years ago, what I know now, I may have never left my abuser,” the mother reported. “I might have stayed and settled for being abused, along with my daughter because at least we would be together, instead of apart while being abused.”

Survey participants reported spending an average of nearly $200,000 on their custody disputes. About 65% of the participants reported they made less than $100,000 annually. Those reporting lower income often reported their ex used greater financial resources to barrage them with “relentless litigation.”

“This deliberate financial warfare drains families of their assets, leading to devastating economic impacts, including the loss of homes, savings and the ability to meet their children’s basic needs,” the survey report states.

Project Justice now is collecting similar statements on parental responsibility evaluators and child and family investigators, whom family court judges appoint in contentious custody disputes to evaluate parenting and help guide custody rulings.

The group plans to use those statements to determine whether court-appointed professionals that make parenting evaluations during custody disputes have potential biases and whether lawyers regularly ensure select evaluators are appointed to their cases because they are likely to favor their clients.

The survey results have been shared with officials in the office of Gov. Jared Polis as well as with staffers of the Colorado Attorney General. Weiser is pushing plans to develop additional domestic violence training for court-appointed parental evaluators, which may extend to judges handling custody disputes.

The legislature in 2021 required parental evaluators to complete at least 20 hours of initial training on domestic violence and child abuse and 15 additional hours of ongoing training every five years.

But Weiser’s office in its annual report on the findings of the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board said “it does not appear that there are many eligible training offerings in

Colorado, nor trainings that fully and accurately account for” domestic violence dynamics within the family court system.

In the past, the judiciary successfully resisted efforts by the legislative branch to mandate training on domestic violence and child abuse, Froelich said, because the judiciary believes lawmakers cannot impose mandates on a co-equal branch of government. Froelich said Márquez and Weiser now are contemplating a training regimen that would come from the judiciary itself.

“We’re in a very preliminary phase and don’t have anything to share at this point,” said Lawrence Pacheco, the spokesperson for Weiser, who declined an interview request.

One area of concern involves magistrates ruling on custody disputes who often begin hearing cases 30 minutes after they are sworn in, Froelich added.

“Is there an opportunity then to require onboarding training of magistrates?” Froelich said. “There’s a sense, and I think it’s borne out statistically, that family courts are one of the first rotations for magistrates.”

Weiser became concerned because of information presented to the Colorado Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board. His office chairs the board and appoints the members of the board. Annually, his office presents an annual report on domestic violence fatality data gathered by the board.

This year, the board’s annual report found involvement in family court is a risk factor for potential death.

“In speaking with advocates and victims across the state, it is evident that victims are not believed by various actors within the system and given the nature of DV (domestic violence), often lack evidence or outside corroboration of the abuse they have experienced,” that report further stated.

One member of the board is a Larimer County woman “who repeatedly discussed the abuse she and her children faced from her ex-husband with the judges and multiple parental responsibility evaluators assigned to her family court case,” the report added.

She repeatedly presented evidence of risk factors – ranging from her ex-husband punching holes in walls, stalking, gun ownership and expressing threats and threatening suicide. Unsupervised parenting time continued to be awarded to the father despite the mother’s fears. He would go on to kill their daughters, age 8 and 6, in a murder/suicide in December 2022.

Reform advocates said they would like to see magistrates and judges placed on suspension if a child is murdered following the dismissal of credible domestic or child abuse allegations raised during a custody dispute. During the suspension, an independent oversight committee should review judicial rulings in the custody dispute for potential error, the reform advocates say.

Froelich, the legislator, said she regularly hears complaints that judges and magistrates still aren’t following a new law she successfully pushed the legislature to pass last year that placed new restrictions on the use of reunification therapy between children and abusive parents.

That law barred judges from restricting the custody of a parent who is competent, protective and not abusive solely to improve a relationship with the other parent. It prohibited reunification treatment that is predicated on cutting off a relationship between a child and a protective parent with whom the child has a bond.

Judges and magistrates may still be sorting through how to apply the new law, but in one hearing held in an Arapahoe County courtroom in September Magistrate Echo Ryan referenced the new law in refusing to restore parenting time to a father accused of violent abuse.

The magistrate said at the conclusion of the hearing that given the new law, “this court couldn’t even begin to order the mother to take steps to address the resistance of the children to contact with their father.”

During that day-long hearing the father, who had moved to Texas after his ex-wife relocated there, repeatedly asserted he had a right to parent his children despite a history of domestic violence arrests, allegations of child abuse and violations of protection orders.

In one arrest, he had been accused of kicking his then- pregnant wife as she crawled away from him and of strangling her, an attack she said left their son with developmental disabilities after his birth.

The mother had pointed to her ex’s taking a life insurance policy out on their children as a sign of potential peril. Their daughter had reported in therapy seeing the father surreptitiously drug their mother’s drink with a suspicious powder.

The magistrate noted that while the father had made gains in addressing his anger issues, under the new law she could not even consider restoring his parenting time until he was assessed by a mental health professional approved by the Colorado Domestic Violence Offender Management Board.

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