The United States is not doing enough to prevent domestic violence, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

 

The anti-U.S. ruling by the IACHR, which is part of the Organization of American States, marked the first time that an international tribunal has criticized the United States for violating the rights of a domestic violence survivor…in this case Jessica Lenahan Gonzales of Castle Rock, Colorado.

 

In June 1999, Lenahan sought police help against her estranged husband, who had been ordered by the courts to stay away from his wife and three daughters. The husband, however, abducted the children, who wound up dead after police killed their father in a shootout at a police station. The daughters, aged 7, 8 and 10, were found shot to death in Gonzales’ car. It is still not clear whose bullets killed them, those of Gonzalez or the police.

 

Lenahan was beside herself over local law enforcement’s refusal to enforce the restraining order placed on her husband. She sued in federal court and took her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to learn in 2005 that Colorado state law did not require state police to enforce restraining orders.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Rights Commission Rebukes U.S. on Domestic Violence (by Amanda Wilson, Inter Press Service)

Report No. 80/11 (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights)

Castle Rock v. Gonzales (Oyez)