Jailed for Protecting their Children: Family Court Is Silencing Mothers
It took seven weekends in jail, and a viral social media storm, before Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins was able to speak freely about what happened to her.
The Colorado mother of three was sentenced last fall for defying a court order to send her children to 'reunification therapy' with their estranged father, despite her concerns about his history of abuse. What started as a quiet family court dispute exploded into an international debate on parental rights, trauma, and the criminalization of protective mothers.
Pickrel-Hawkins is far from alone.
There's Dr. Kreslyn Barron Odum of Jesup, Georgia. Last fall, she dropped her six-year-old daughter off at school, and didn't see her again for 32 days. Her ex-husband picked the child up without warning and relocated her three hours away. No emergency hearing was held. No abuse had been alleged. Still, the court failed to intervene. Since then, Dr. Odum has seen her daughter just four times, each under the supervision of a third party.
'I just want to see my daughter. I want her back home where she belongs,' she says .
Dr. Odum is still waiting for a basic status hearing that has yet to be scheduled. A respected optometrist with no criminal record, she's now a mother on the sidelines, without explanation and without justice. In response, she formed a local support group on Facebook, where she discovered dozens of women near her hometown enduring similar struggles. Now they meet in the back of her eye clinic to share legal strategies, documentation tips, and emotional support. Some days, they simply cry. Like the other mothers, she worries the judge in her family court case may send her to jail as well.
'This is a national emergency,' said Danielle Pollack, policy director at the National Safe Parents Organization (NSPO), a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. 'And it's hiding in plain sight. Family court is one of the most unregulated systems we have. Protective parents are being criminalized, and children are paying the price.'
The crisis doesn't end with custody disputes. In state after state, women are being jailed simply for trying to shield their children from harm.
In Colorado, Protective Mom Kalea Aine spent nearly a year behind bars under a sweeping gag order that forbade her from speaking about her family court case, not even to say why she was in jail. During the height of COVID-19, she was incarcerated without an attorney and couldn't answer basic questions from fellow inmates: 'What's your crime?' they asked. 'Why are you here?'
She had no answer she was legally allowed to give.
Her case drew international attention and inspired legislation at the Colorado Capitol to curb judicial overreach. Before her incarceration, Aine and advocate Maralee McLean, executive director of MomsFightBack.org , had urged the Arapahoe County District Attorney to investigate alleged sexual abuse against her daughters. Three days later, Aine was behind bars, sentenced to 18 months for contempt.
'All she did was believe her daughters,' said McLean. 'That was her real 'crime.' And that's what our sick court system punishes.'
Family court is a civil court system, meaning that constitutional protections, like the right to a public defender or a jury, often don't apply. Judges wield sweeping authority, and gag orders, custody reversals, and jail sentences for contempt are frequently handed down without public oversight. For mothers already facing trauma, legal intimidation, and financial pressure, the system becomes impossible to navigate—and impossible to fight.
What these women have in common is simple: They believed their children. They raised concerns. And they were punished for it.
'This isn't just a legal story,' Dr. Odum says. 'It's a human rights story. It's a gender justice story. And it's long past time we told it.'
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