If Child Safety Only Depends Only On Judicial Discretion, Then There Is No Law Protecting Children At All.
Our sincerest condolences go out to the family of Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia, especially to the mother, Whitney Decker, for a mothers worst fear has become her reality and the heartbreak is unimaginable. We encourage you to donate to Whitney’s verified go-fund-me account: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-whitney-decker. We want to shed some light into how our current custody statutes affected this case and how we can do better.
This custody case is controlled by private family law, Chapter 26 Domestic Relations, not the Keeping Families Together Act. Unfortunately, while it does not go into effect until June, new legislation, which I will later refer to as Bill As Passed HB 1620, contains several sections that would have weakened the court’s requirements to protect these children. We strongly believe that an alternative version that was proposed to the legislature and initially passed the House that session, had it gone into effect in time, would have saved these children, the Engrossed Substitute HB 1620, but this version was not adopted.
Bill as Passed Removes Required Screening for allegations of domestic abuse
Would an immediate screening for domestic abuse have prevented these murders? The current statute requires a screening when domestic abuse is alleged. Reports conflict whether domestic abuse was alleged, however what’s clear is court documents ordered a domestic violence assessment. While Mr. Decker had not yet completed this assessment, the Bill as Passed removes this requirement, see line 15, page 13. Whereas the Engrossed Substitute would have required the court to go beyond a screening, but also require the court to consider and make specific written findings based on a list of relevant factors of abuse. These findings would have mandated the court to create a plan to protect the child, which would have more likely than not to include supervised visitation.
Bill as Passed Conflates normal parenting behaviors with serious violent mental illnesses blurring the lines between safe behaviors and critical signs of violence
Another provision in the statute that the Bill as Passed failed to improve was the one section that conflates normal parenting behaviors with serious violent behaviors into the “emotional impairment” label, see line 23, page 12. The “emotional impairment” label could include anything from acting “emotional” about a legitimate safety concern to violent behaviors typical of certain cluster B personality disorders. The limitations imposed on parents with this label are optional, not mandatory, and range from total no contact with the child to no limitation at all, hence even full custody. Travis had recently been diagnosed with a cluster B personality disorder, Borderline Personality disorder, but because this label is in the same category with this wide ranging “emotional impairment” label no mandatory protections are triggered. Furthermore emotional impairment is labeled on survivors of domestic abuse more often than not, as their abuse-induced PTSD is considered an “emotional impairment.” Meanwhile seriously dangerous parents with cluster B personality disorders receive overnights or even full custody, as these personality disorders cause patterns of manipulation, coercive control, physically violent behaviors, aggressive litigation and the ability to charm and deceive others including the court.
To some people these dangerous parents are abusers, to others they are mentally ill. Either way we need to stop relying on judicial discretion to decide whether to impose limitations on parents with this behavior and instead narrow the application and make these common sense limitations in these circumstances mandatory. We need to either very carefully refine mental illness to only serious and chronic violent mental illnesses, (not abuse-induced PTSD), or include these behaviors in our state’s definition of domestic abuse and make protections mandatory to prevent future abuse.
Bill as Passed does not require a plan to protect the children
The Bill as Passed, and current law, in essence relies entirely on the judges discretion to protect the children. What’s worse, the Bill as Passed provides a pathway where abusers can cross claim trivial factors in an effort to outweigh serious domestic abuse, as it allows the court to apply serious limitations previously directed only on perpetrators of domestic abuse, to also be applied to victims of domestic abuse (line 27, page 16). The Engrossed Substitute required a safety plan: first, it closed up these loopholes by requiring first the court to analyze several factors regarding abuse and removed the often weaponized cross claims, second, if the court decides to grant residential time for that parent it must overcome several more factors, and third if the parent overcomes those factors the court must create a safety plan.
Bill as Passed does not include judicial training on domestic abuse.
There were several indicators of abuse in the court documents: the children refusing visitation, his borderline personality disorder diagnosis, and the mother’s request for a domestic violence assessment. A judicial training could have prevented this tragedy, as the judge would have known immediately that the children were not safe with this combination of factors, day or night. The judge in this case had good intentions and actually ordered the more restrictive parenting plan proposed by the parties, it just wasn’t restrictive enough. (But it must be noted that this is actually a rare occurrence, more often than not, the judge compromises, or orders the less restrictive plan.) A judge trained in domestic abuse, as required in the Engrossed Substitute, would know that sometimes survivors don’t ask for enough, and he would have seen red flags of lethality all over this case, and required professional or at least lay supervision. At PAYES we’ve seen cases all over the board, sometimes judicial officers understand domestic abuse more than the survivor themselves, these are the judges we need in the courts, and we can make these judges with required training.
In sum, the Bill as Passed, gives judges almost unlimited discretion, (even raising the current statute’s standards to meet mandatory supervision for parents who have committed child rape from a civil finding to a criminal finding, see pages 18 - 21). The Engrossed Substitute would have been a vastly more protective bill, but more work is needed. RCW 26.09.191 is just one statute in a slew of statutes that needs work to protect children’s safety from the corruption, nepotism, conflict of interest, bias and downright denialism in family court. You can read about how judicial discretion is, at best, flimsy in the face of the corruption in the story of my good friend, Gina Bloom, here: A WA mother had custody of kids and protection from her abuser. Then a guardian ad litem got involved. By Kelsey Turner of InvistageWest, published May 19, 2025. - Thank you, Shira Cole, founder of nonprofit, PAYES.