Murder of 3 Wenatchee sisters highlights complexity of family court cases

(The Center Square) – The tragic murder of three young sisters near Wenatchee is bringing new attention to the complexities of family court and judicial discretion in complicated custody and visitation plans.

The death of the young Decker girls – Olivia, 5, Evelyn, 8, Paityn, 9 – is also traumatizing for families who are in the system and working for change to better protect children.

As of Thursday afternoon, 32-year-old Travis Decker, accused of killing his daughters sometime last weekend, remains at large.

“If there's concern for the spouse, there should be concern for the children,” Rep. Brian Burnett, R-Wenatchee, said.

Burnett, a former sheriff of Chelan County, said that, in looking over court documents related to the Decker case, it was clear the suspect's mental health was in sharp decline.

“There was a degradation of his mental health, declining since they originally put their parenting plan together in 2022. And if you look at the timeline and the information that she [Whitney Decker, the children’s mother] provided to the courts, it's definitely alarming,” Burnett observed. “Something in my mind should have been done, and I know that I heard a lot of people are up in arms over the judge, our local judge here, that issued that parenting plan.”

Whitney Decker’s attorney told The Center Square that Travis Decker had not been able to meet the requirements of the parenting plan to have a psychological evaluation and other mental health requirements, blaming a lack of access to Veterans Affairs services in the area, and said he was trying to get help.

Decker served in the Army and was a member of the Washington National Guard.

“I hope legislatively that we could have this as a wake-up call,” Burnett said.

He told The Center Square that House Bill 1620, passed during this year’s legislative session, takes the state in the wrong direction. HB 1620 is meant to revise existing law to enhance child protection in parenting plans, particularly in cases involving domestic violence, abuse, or sexual offenses.

Critics say the law as passed undermines protections for survivors of abuse and their children by increasing judicial discretion, potentially leading to harsher outcomes for survivors.

“With 1620, we added the striker that protected the victims better, and then of course it went to the Senate, and they just destroyed it and tore it right back apart,” Burnett said.

A striker is anamendment to a bill that is offered when a legislator wants to make substantial changes to legislation.

Tamara Emerson, founder of End Child Abuse Washington, told The Center Square that the tragedy in Wenatchee hit too close to home for her.

“It’s impactful just because with my children and their dad, even on supervised visits, he has taken them to places that were off what he was supposed to do, so any time there's a variation in a residential schedule or supervised visitation, it’s alarming to someone that knows the risks associated with the deviation,” she explained.

Emerson, whose children are 11 and 9, was in Olympia several times during the legislative session, advocating for more protections for children in cases of parental abuse.

She ended up opposing the final version of the bill, which saw the Senate remove the House striker on HB 1620.

The new law makes it easier for courts to ignore the impacts of abuse, according to Emerson.

“In my experience, even in supervised visitation, the quality of supervision providers needs reform, and they need more training,” said Emerson.

She suggested judges also need more training.

“They went to law school,” Emerson said. “They are not psychologists or experts in psychology.”

During debate on the bill on the House floor, Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, urged lawmakers not to support the final version.

“We are trying to find what is best for the child or children involved, and I think that has to be our north star on these issues,” Walsh said. “The bipartisan version of this bill that we had that passed off this floor did as good a job as we could do to guide our courts and our judges through that almost impossibly complicated and messy body of law.”

Emerson said that while she has concerns about giving judges more discretion, the courts sometimes need to step in to prioritize children’s safety.

“If there is an evaluation for domestic violence or for mental health disorders, that is a risk we cannot take as a society, giving unsupervised contact with the children,” she said. “If, in this case, the court had ordered treatment, and he was not complying with that treatment, the children's lives should have been protected by supervised visitation because he was not compliant with the court order.”

Emerson suggested that Whitney Decker almost certainly did everything to protect her children, but was also probably just trying to keep her ex-husband involved in their daughters’ lives.

“But the court should know how to protect children,” she said, “and they should be ruling in favor of children and not just protecting a parent's rights.”