The death certificates for the murdered children state an unknown time and place of death. Jessica Lenahan sees the documents as open wounds, examples of a broken system that seven years ago failed to protect her daughters – Rebecca, 10, Katheryn, 9, and Leslie, 7 – from their father’s death wish.
Speaking to more than 100 lawyers and advocates for battered women Thursday at the University of Denver’s law school, Lenahan made no qualms about the anger she still has for the police and the system that failed her.
“We need education, and we need training, and everybody needs to be on the same page when the law’s concerned. What are we paying (authorities) for? They don’t think they have to pay attention to the law, but they are the law.”
Lenahan, who no longer goes by her previous married name, Jessica Gonzales, was guest speaker at DU law school’s seminar on domestic violence, “Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales: Some Are Guilty, All Are Accountable.” The seminar, which continues today, is expected to draw more than 200 people from across the nation and countries as far away as Australia.
Colorado District Judge Gilbert Gutierrez, who presides over domestic violence cases in Greeley, was among the few Colorado judges in attendance.
“What I think this conference is doing is getting away from the traditional focus on the individual’s responsibility and blame and making us wake up and see the larger picture,” he said. “It’s made me re-examine concepts of accountability as a community for domestic violence.”
In June 1999, Lenahan’s estranged husband was shot to death after he opened fire on Castle Rock’s police headquarters. Hours earlier, Lenahan had pleaded with police to search for Gonzales, who at the time had a restraining order against him that wasn’t enforced.
The bodies of Lenahan’s three daughters were found in Gonzales’ truck near the town center in Castle Rock.
Lenahan, who now lives in California, sued Castle Rock police for $30 million for failing to enforce the restraining order, but Colorado – like most other states – makes its police immune from lawsuits except in cases of extreme negligence.
Although Lenahan won in the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, her case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last year that she had no right to sue.
As a result, advocates say, protections for battered women won over the past 30 years have been chipped away by higher-court decisions such as this one.
Tenth Circuit Senior Judge Stephanie Seymour, who authored the opinion siding with Lenahan, is one of today’s keynote speakers. She’ll talk about the need for state lawmakers to take a tougher stance on domestic violence.
