SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The mother of three girls who were killed by their father at an Arden Arcade church publicly spoke out on Monday, her first remarks since her children were shot Feb. 28.
Around 50 people attended a news conference Monday at the Capitol in support of a bill that would force family court judges to learn more about domestic violence, with the aim of applying that to contested custody cases.
David Mora shot Samia, Samantha and Samarah Gutierrez, ages 13, 10 and 9, during a supervised visit. The visit was sanctioned by a judge despite the man’s history of violence, which was documented in court proceedings. Ileana Gutierrez, the girls’ mother, had been granted a final restraining order against her ex but was obligated to share custody.
Gutierrez, who wore a T-shirt printed with a photo of her daughters, spoke in Spanish after state Sen. Susan Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, who’s sponsoring the bill, and Ana Estevez, the mother of Piqui, another young child who was killed in California by his father.
Rubio summarized Gutierrez’s comments in English: “The victims are not protected.”
Erika Gonzalez, the mother of Yesli Velazquez Gonzalez, a 23-year-old woman found shot to death in Los Angeles June 5 along with her 6-year-old son, Angel, also spoke in Spanish. Gonzalez told the Los Angeles Times that she believes her daughter’s boyfriend killed them. He has been named a person of interest by law enforcement.
A hearing for the bill is scheduled for Tuesday. Rubio named it “Piqui’s Law” after Estevez’s 5-year-old son, who was slain in 2017.
The deaths of Samia, Samantha and Samarah threw family court failures into the spotlight just four months ago, and their story is part of a broader pattern. The Center for Judicial Excellence has found that between 2008 and 2022, at least 851 children were murdered while their families were involved in family court cases. Of the 85 children slain in California, at least 25 died after authority figures ignored or overlooked abuse allegations.
There is evidence that when mothers allege domestic violence in a custody case, the alleged abuser can become more likely to gain custody of their child. George Washington University law professor Joan Meier analyzed 10 years’ of published custody rulings in the U.S. and found that mothers lost custody after saying their ex was abusive 26% of the time. The court disbelieved most mothers’ claims of abuse, but women could lose custody of their children even when a judge did believe them. In 14% of cases in which the judge acknowledged intimate partner violence, mothers still lost custody. When judges believed fathers committed child physical abuse, mothers still lost custody of their endangered children 20% of the time.
“Fathers get much more out of custody courts than mothers do,” Meier told the Texas Observer, “at the expense of children.” She’s found that fathers frequently claim in court that the mother is lying to alienate his children from him; sometimes, courts seemed to operate under the assumption that this is happening even when the father does not bring such claims.
Following that pattern, in 2017, a family court granted Piqui’s father partial custody, even though the boy said his father wanted to hurt his mother, and even though Estevez repeatedly told authorities he was a danger to herself and her son and she formally sought a restraining order against him that detailed frightening abuse. The judge deemed him fit to care for the boy. Ultimately, the man admitted that he smothered Piqui to death and left his small body in the woods to spite Estevez.
There have been multiple pieces of legislation in response to Piqui’s murder. In 2018, Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, introduced Piqui’s resolution, an unsuccessful bill that, among other things, would have encouraged more records to be kept of domestic violence and custody hearings.
In 2020, Sen. Susan Rubio ushered in a new law that required family court judges to consider coercive control — a psychological form of abuse — when making child custody determinations. Estevez testified in favor of the bill. Speaking before lawmakers, she referenced the way physical violence can be taken more seriously than psychological or emotional abuse. “Had I walked into the courtroom with a black eye or a broken arm,” she said, “perhaps the outcome would be different.”
Now, the senator is championing Piqui’s Law, which would require family court personnel, including judges, to receive ongoing training to better recognize and respond to domestic violence, child abuse and family trauma. In its current iteration, the bill says that the intent is for authorities to “make appropriate custody decisions that prioritize child safety and well-being.”
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