Biased conclusions in the tragic murder of Kayden Mancuso

Judicial watchdog and “child advocacy” organization exploits tragedies to promote an ideologically-driven agenda

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Nothing is more tragic than the death of a child caught in the wake of a contentious divorce. Yet, it is essential that conclusions about failures to protect victims of divorce-driven violence be arrived at only after intensive, objective deliberation. Sadly, California-based child advocacy group The Center for Judicial Excellence doesn’t do this work and draws wildly biased conclusions.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this dereliction more clearly than their characterization of the murder of Kayden Mancuso. The complete details of the record of this case have been publicly available since August of 2018. Horrifically, 7-year-old Hayden Mancuso was killed by her father, Jeffrey Mancuso. Kayden’s parents had been embroiled in a bitter custody battle when Jeffrey did the unthinkable, and the aftermath of Kayden’s death was obviously difficult for everyone involved.

The Honorable Jeffrey G. Trauger was the judge who entered custody orders in the Mancuso case. The father had had regular contact with Kayden since he had separated from Kayden’s mother several years before. The public record shows that there was absolutely no testimony from any witness–including the child’s mother and professional evaluators–about concern for Kayden’s safety while with her father. Kayden’s father had been found to be abusive and hostile in several interactions with other adults, but his psychological evaluation showed that he did not score highly for reactive anger or anger management issues.

So Judge Trauger granted the custody schedule that Kayden’s mother had requested and the custody evaluator had recommended (alternating Saturdays and Sundays). The father’s custody time had been shortened not because he was perceived as posing a risk to Kayden, but out of a desire to shield the child from any possible angry outbursts he might have with others. Kayden’s mother had not appealed the custody decision.

But after Kayden was killed, her mother and others blamed Judge Trauger’s order for the murder, then a wrongful death suit was filed against Judge Trauger. The suit was eventually dismissed and Trauger was found not to have erred. Even so, the Center’s website falsely alleged there were safety concerns in Kayden’s case that were “ignored” by the judge. And the horrific loss of a child meant the case received considerable media attention, with news stories portraying the case as one where the judge and custody evaluators could have prevented Kayden’s death but instead “got it wrong.” The national media coverage about the case has been heavily promoted by The Center of Judicial Excellence, the flames fanned to gain public support for the federal Kayden’s Law, which was signed as part of reauthorization of the  Violence against Women’s Act.

The law, named after the lost child, allows for an expanded look into the history of abuse of an accused by the court. Like so much legislation, it looks good on paper, but upends the presumption of innocence of a parent who, for example, has zero history of violence or abuse with their children. The language of the law promotes a gender-biased perspective on domestic violence (only males are abusers, only females are victims), aims to restrict judicial discretion in the appointment of experts on domestic violence and child abuse cases, and control the content of the training that judges and custody evaluators receive.

Kathleen Russell, founding executive the Center, emailed Judge Trauger, claiming she had personally “researched” over 800 instances of American children being killed by a divorced or separating parent, often while engaged in family court proceedings. But this information was highly suspect. The honorable Doris A. Pechkurow, a retired judge from Pennsylvania, rebutted Ms. Russell’s claims in an email. Among her counter-arguments, Pechkurow pointed out that according to data on the Center’s own website, 86.5 percent of child homicides had no court involvement before the child’s death, evidence that points to the fact that this sort of violence is hardly a common occurrence.

Judge Pechkurow also found other misrepresentations of custody cases on the Center’s website that seemingly serve to pin future violence on judges unfairly. One example: A case where another father had shot and killed the child and then himself during a supervised visit. Again, an unspeakably terrible death. But the Center portrayed this falsely as an example of a judge ignoring safety concerns, when in reality the judge had ordered supervised visits due to safety concerns for the child. Many other cases listed on the website detail terrible incidents of violence against children that are completely unrelated to the child’s relationship with their parent.

The Centre’s spreading of misinformation continues and advocates are being trained by the Centre to push the implementation of Kayden’s Law across 20 states this next legislative cycle. As part of their advocacy strategy, they are sending incomplete case details to reporters with misleading information that not only targets judges, but also custody evaluators that have performed their jobs admirably. The strategy works on reporters like Hannah Dreyfus, a self-labeled gender-based violence reporter for Propublica, who pushes her readers to support the implementation of Kayden’s Law. She recently wrote a hit piece about a custody evaluator in Colorado who she alleged had dismissed allegations of abuse made by children in several cases. In the article she misrepresents many details and ignores statistics that paint a clearer picture of family law violence. For example, a considerable amount of scientific research provided to Dreyfus and promptly ignored shows only about 10 percent of violence allegations brought by parents in family court are actually substantiated after thorough investigation.

            If so many women and children are being abused and killed by abusive husbands and fathers due to judicial biases and poorly trained evaluators, why do these advocates have to distort and misrepresent the details of anecdotal stories to make their point? I submit that it is because they are promoting an ideological agenda that does not represent reality. The negative impact of these disingenuous interpretations is greater than most can imagine. While it is understandable that the search for answers in the wake of an emotionally charged tragedy is difficult work, The Center for Judicial Excellence’s distortion of details must be regarded as loathsome exploitation of the pain of parents already victims to a broken system, exploitation with the goal of maintaining a malignant status quo that ensures millions of children will continue to be denied the loving involvement of good parents.