Gonzales was living in Colorado when her three young daughters, Rebecca, age 10, Katheryn, age eight and Leslie, age seven, were killed when local police failed to enforce a restraining order against her estranged husband. The girls were abducted by their father and although Gonzales repeatedly called the police, telling them of her fears for the safety of her daughters, the police failed to respond. Several hours later, Gonzales’ husband drove to the police station with a gun and opened fire. The police shot and killed him, and then discovered the bodies of the three girls in the back of his pickup truck.Gonzales sued her local police department in Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), which made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Astonishingly, the Court ruled that police departments cannot be held accountable in civil courts for failure to enforce restraining orders under the law as it is currently written. NOW president Kim Gandy described the ruling as a "'shoot here' sign around the necks of battered women and their children all across the country," and it's difficult to argue with that assessment.
Will Gonzales' lawsuit be successful? Almost certainly not; except in cases of war crimes, international human rights law consists of little more than a series of suggestions. The U.S. has consistently refused to sign the most progressive women's rights treaties, and has summarily ignored many of the human rights treaties that it has signed. But the lawsuit will bring increased public attention to her case, and hopefully pressure Congress and/or state governments to take some action to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again.
