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Violence Against Women
Domestic Violence Survivor Asks International Tribunal To Hold U.S. Responsible For Human Rights Violations (3/25/2008)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and
Columbia Law School's Human Rights Clinic filed a merits brief with the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) detailing their charges that
the U.S. broke international law in violating the human rights of a domestic
violence survivor. The brief was filed on behalf of Jessica Lenahan (formerly
Gonzales), whose three daughters were kidnapped by her estranged husband and
killed, and whose domestic violence protection claims were rejected by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Lenahan's case is the first individual complaint by
a victim of domestic violence to be brought against the United States for
international human rights violations.
“Jessica Lenahan was forced to
turn to an international body because the U.S. legal system failed to provide
her with even a bare modicum of justice,” said Araceli Martinez-Olguin, an
attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “We hope that this action will
ensure that other domestic violence survivors in this country and all of the
Americas have legal recourse when their human rights are violated by their
governments.”
Last October the IACHR, an international human rights
tribunal based in Washington, D.C., declared in a landmark “admissibility”
decision that it had competence to examine Lenahan’s case, rejecting the U.S.
State Department's position that the American Declaration on the Rights and
Duties of Man Declaration does not create positive governmental
obligations. Instead, the decision holds the U.S. to well-established
international standards on state responsibility to exercise “due diligence” to
prevent, investigate, and punish human rights violations and protect and
compensate victims of domestic violence. The IACHR also found that Lenahan had
unsuccessfully exhausted all domestic legal avenues available to her.
The IACHR will decide whether the U.S. and the state of Colorado
violated the rights of domestic violence victims and their children to special
protections, as well as violated Lenahan's and her children's human rights
- specifically the rights to life, non-discrimination, family life/unity,
due process and to petition the government.
“Nothing can bring my
children back,” said Jessica Lenahan. “But I hope that this petition will
prevent the kind of tragedy my little girls and my entire family suffered from
happening to other families.”
Lenahan 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 Lenahan repeatedly called the police telling them of her fears for the
safety of her daughters, the police failed to respond. Several hours later,
Lenahan's 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 cab of his pickup truck.
Lenahan filed a lawsuit against the police,
but in June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court found that she had no constitutional
right to police enforcement of her restraining order. In December 2005, she
filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, saying that
the inaction of the police and the Supreme Court's decision violated her human
rights.
“When countries fail to protect the rights of their own
citizens, international tribunals are a means of holding them accountable," said
Caroline Bettinger-Lopez of Columbia Law School's Human Rights Clinic. "The
Inter-American Commission's decisions carry international and moral weight.”
“The United States is not exempt from enforcing the international legal
protections that domestic violence survivors are entitled to,” said Steven Watt,
an attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. “We are confident that the court
will find the U.S. accountable to its own and international law.”
The
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was created in 1959 and is expressly
authorized to examine allegations of human rights violations by members of the
Organization of American States, which includes the United States. It also
conducts on-site visits to observe the general human rights situations in all 35
member-states of the Organization of American States and to investigate specific
allegations of violations of Inter-American human rights treaties and other
legal instruments. Its charge is to promote the observance and the defense of
human rights in the Americas.
Lenahan is represented by Martinez-Olguin,
Lenora Lapidus and Emily Martin of the ACLU Women's Rights Program, Watt of the
ACLU Human Rights Program and Bettinger-Lopez of Columbia Law School's Human
Rights Clinic.
More information is available online at:
www.aclu.org/womensrights/violence/gonzalesvusa.html
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