Travis Decker search: WA lawmakers, advocates demand family court reforms

When Kathy Sherlock learned three young girls were found dead after being reported missing from Wenatchee, the case felt hauntingly familiar.

Like Whitney Decker – mother of Wenatchee girls Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia, ages 9, 8 and 5 – Sherlock, who lives in Pennsylvania, told a family court that she was concerned about her daughter, 7-year-old Kayden, spending unsupervised time with her ex.

Also like Decker, police told Sherlock they would not issue an Amber Alert shortly after Kayden’s father failed to bring their daughter home on time after a court-ordered unsupervised visit with him in 2018.

The day after her conversation with police, Sherlock learned that her daughter was found dead.

In the wake of the Decker sisters’ killings, Sherlock joined about a dozen child safety advocates and Washington legislators on Friday calling for reforms to the state’s family court system that would help keep children safe from a “dangerous parent.”

“(Family court judges) knew there was an issue. They knew that something wasn’t right,” Sherlock said tearfully from a podium at the Seattle City Hall plaza. “What happened to the Decker girls should not have happened.”

The group’s demands coincided with authorities’ 12th day of searching for Travis Decker, the former U.S. Army soldier suspected of murdering his three daughters on May 30. The girls’ bodies and Decker’s truck were found three days later near an abandoned campsite outside of Leavenworth.

Advocates said the deaths of Kayden and the Decker sisters could have been prevented had judges taken their mothers’ concerns about their children’s fathers seriously, and not ordered the children to spend unsupervised time with their fathers.

Family court judges should only grant supervised visits to any parent who could pose a safety risk to their children, and supervised visitation centers should be made more accessible and affordable throughout the state, advocates said. The group also demanded family court judges receive more training on working with families experiencing domestic violence, and pay more attention to child safety risk assessments.

A federal “Kayden’s Law” passed in 2022 incentivizes states to implement changes such as giving domestic violence training to family court judges. But the state has not yet adopted those changes.

Rep. Amy Walen, D-Kirkland, said lawmakers have a “solemn responsibility to face the question” of how current judicial and law enforcement systems may have failed to protect Kayden and the Decker sisters.

“If a system can’t protect children, it’s not a system worth protecting,” Walen said.

Sherlock said she reported concerns about Kayden’s father to a family court judge for two years, including that he was barred from his daughter’s school and had attacked her and other family members.

After Kayden went missing, Sherlock said local police told her they would not issue an Amber Alert for her daughter, because a judge had authorized her to spend time with her father. By the next morning, Kayden’s father had killed his daughter, then himself.

In a protective order drafted after Whitney Decker’s daughters went missing, she reported that her ex-husband has post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder and a history of suicide attempts. She had previously reported that Travis Decker was homeless and living at campsites and out of his car.

After her daughters went missing, police said they could not issue an Amber Alert because Travis Decker had taken the girls as part of a custodial agreement, and he hadn’t made any overt threats to harm them.

Sherlock said her and Whitney Decker’s cases reflected a problem in the U.S. and worldwide, where family court judges and police don’t take seriously the safety concerns reported by a parent, usually a mother.

“I only needed one person in family court to listen to me, and not one did,” she said. “I know what it’s like to lose a child this way, and I don’t want another mother to feel this.”