Death of 3 girls in Travis Decker's custody is a familiar tragedy

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5 hours ago

As authorities in Washington state search for a man accused of killing his three young daughters after taking them for a scheduled custody visitation, the tragedy rings all too familiar for the parents of murdered children and advocates who say courts allow this to happen.
Travis Decker, 32, is wanted for the deaths of Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, who were found dead on June 2 after their mother reported them missing. Authorities in Wenatchee in central Washington said Decker took the children for a scheduled custody visit and failed to return them to their mother on time. The parents were divorced, and Decker was homeless and staying primarily in his truck.
A search turned up Decker's white 2017 GMC Sierra truck near a campground, and the girls' bodies were found nearby, but Decker has not been found, police said as of June 4.
Courts are troublingly reluctant to believe mothers who say fathers are a safety risk to their children in custody disputes, and all too often put children at risk to satisfy their bias toward paternal rights, said Joan Meier, director of the National Family Violence Law Center at the George Washington University Law School.
The particulars of Decker's custody arrangements are unclear, but Meier said the outcome is a tragic reality: The failure of judges to protect children has led to too many deaths.
"What is it going to take for not only society, but especially professionals who practice in family courts, to recognize that one more child being murdered is one too many, and that we need to do something to change how we're adjudicating these cases?" Meier said.
Since 2008, there have been nearly 1,000 children killed by a parent when divorce, separation or a custody dispute are at issue, according to data tracked by the Center for Judicial Excellence. Of those, about 140 were deemed preventable cases due to court failures. In those cases, the center found that a protective parent attempted to restrict an abusive parent's access to the victims, or that there were risk factors that should have been detected by a trained judge or child advocate. Some of the deaths are also attributed to failures by law enforcement or child protective agencies.
Media reports of children murdered by a parent involved in a divorce, separation or custody issue can be found all across the United States. According to the Center for Judicial Excellence, fathers are the perpetrators in these cases 70% of the time, while mothers kill their children 18% of the time.
More: A child dies every 6 days amid custody fights, family court lapses. Advocates want change.
In recent years, the deaths have included:
A 10-month-old infant in Tucson, Arizona, who authorities said was killed by his father Jimmy Torre McElroy in October 2024, the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. The month before the child's death, McElroy had been given temporary custody, according to KOLD-TV.
Ellie Lorenzo, 3 years old, whose body was found in July 2024 at a recycling facility in San Jose, California, after going with her father, Jared Lorenzo, for a scheduled custody visit. Jared Lorenzo was also found dead in an apparent suicide, police said. ABC7 San Francisco reported that the child's mother had made repeated requests that court-ordered visits with the father be supervised because she feared for her safety, but the court continued to grant him unsupervised access.
Rashawd Hines' 2-year-old son Jayden in 2021 in Florida. Hines sought full custody of Jayden and said he feared for the boy's safety while with his mother, but the court did not immediately act. The mother's boyfriend, Alegray Damiah Jones, was charged with the boy's murder and aggravated child abuse.
The deaths of children at the hands of their parents have occurred under many different circumstances, including during custody disputes and after courts have ordered the children spend time with a parent accused of being unsafe. The Center for Judicial Excellence said domestic violence experts believe the most dangerous time for a victim of abuse and their children is in the days immediately following separation from the alleged perpetrator.
Meier's research revealed a disturbing pattern, she said: When a mother alleges abuse by the father against the children or says she fears for the children's safety, courts may often end up giving more custody to fathers.
In a review of about 2,000 court decisions from January 2005 through December 2014, Meier found that courts believed less than half (41%) of mothers who claimed any kind of abuse by the father, with an even lower rate when the allegation involved abuse of the children.
"There's a very strong bias... – it's embedded and unstated – against believing that a father's dangerous to a child and believing a mother who's saying it or child who's saying it," Meier said.
The Center for Judicial Excellence said on its website that court transcripts show that judges and other court officials were warned about a parent's violent history before placing child victims into their care unsupervised.
"There is a crisis in the family court system that is putting children in danger,' said Kathleen Russell, executive director of the Center for Judicial Excellence, said in 2023. 'When a child is murdered, the system failed. It's irrefutable evidence that something went wrong.'
Meier said a big red flag that a custody issue could end in tragedy include demonstrated behaviors of what's known as "coercive control," which many states consider a form of domestic abuse and is defined as "a pattern of threatening or intimidating behavior that interferes with the free will of another person," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Coercive controllers sometimes take their children's lives as a means of controlling or retaliating against the other parent, Meier said.
Other potential signs include prior threats to kill or threats of suicide, along with firearm ownership, she said.
Advocates are hoping to pass legislation known as Kayden's Law in many states, which would require courts to consider past evidence of abuse in custody cases along with other requirements they hope will curb deadly and violent outcomes. The law is named after 7-year-old Kayden Mancuso, who was killed by her father during an unsupervised visit in 2018 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before he also killed himself, the Bucks County Courier Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
The law passed in Pennsylvania last year despite initial opposition by groups including the ACLU of Pennsylvania which argued that while the measure had good intentions, it could end up harming mothers' contact with their children, especially within families of color, because it would require courts to consider any history of abuse, no matter how old, against any household member. The ACLU later withdrew its opposition after an amendment it said changed the focus to any "on-going risk of abuse."
An important step forward is the education of family judges on the realities of domestic abuse and child abuse, Meier said, adding that serious change is needed in the culture of the family court system in the United States.
"How many kids need to be murdered?" Meier said.
Contributing: Ken Alltucker and Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Death of Decker sisters is a familiar custodial tragedy