WA legislator pushes for family court reforms
By Terry Murry on Monday, January 22nd, 2024 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
OLYMPIA – A Washington legislator wants to reform the state’s family courts. State Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn) is pushing a package of bills aimed at training judges, providing more protections for abuse victims, and setting improved standards for procedures in family court.
“Most of what we’re talking about is psychological abuse,” Fortunato said. “We’re talking about something where there’s no broken bones, there’s no bruises. How do you prove that?”
One of the bills, Senate Bill 5879, known as Kayden’s Law, which has a companion bill in the House, would make Washington eligible for substantial federal funding to train judges and restrict unproven, unsafe “reunification” treatments that force children to be with a dangerous parent and/or parent with whom they resist contact.
The parents of Susan Powell, Chuck and Judy Cox, joined Thursday’s news conference to lend their support of Kayden’s Law. Their grandchildren and daughter were victims of a tragic domestic-violence dispute in 2012 that resulted in the murder of the children by their abusive father. The Coxes recently won a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against Washington state for negligence resulting from the kinds of failings in family courts that Fortunato’s proposals would address.
“I believe that had we had something like Kayden’s Law, things would be very different for our family,” said Chuck Cox. “Judges need to be trained properly.”
Fortunato said the Senate Law and Justice Committee must act on Kayden’s Law by the end of the month for it to have a chance at passing the legislature. Kayden’s Law is named after Kayden Mancuso, 7, who was killed in 2018 by her biological father during a court-ordered unsupervised visit in Pennsylvania. Her father later took his own life.
