Part three of Crime Central’s October series, Behind Closed Doors: Domestic Violence, Crime, and the Systems That Respond.

A court order can name the danger. It can establish boundaries, create consequences, and give law enforcement a legal basis to act.

But a court order cannot answer a phone. It cannot locate a missing child. It cannot make an officer take a reported violation seriously.

Jessica Lenahan did what survivors are so often told to do. She went to court. She obtained an order, and when she believed the order had been violated, she contacted the police.

The paper existed. The protection did not.

Her case would eventually reach the United States Supreme Court and then the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The two bodies asked different legal questions and reached very different conclusions. Between them sits a difficult truth: a right written on paper has limited value when the system responsible for enforcing it does not respond.

Last week’s post followed Tracey Thurman, whose case recognized that discriminatory police protection practices could violate the Equal Protection Clause. Jessica’s case asked the next question: when a court order says police shall enforce it, does the person it protects have any right to that enforcement at all?

The Order

In May 1999, during divorce proceedings, a Colorado court issued Jessica Gonzales—now Jessica Lenahan—a restraining order against her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales. The order directed him not to molest or disturb Jessica or the children and to remain at least 100 yards from the family home.

On June 4, the court made the order permanent and modified it to permit specific parenting time. Simon could see the couple’s three daughters on alternating weekends, for two weeks during the summer, and for a midweek dinner visit arranged by the parents with reasonable notice. He could approach the home to collect the girls for those agreed visits.

That qualification matters. This was not an order that prohibited every contact between Simon and the children. It created a structured exception. The midweek visit was supposed to be arranged, not taken without notice.

The reverse side of the order contained a notice for law enforcement. Its language was unusually direct:

Notice to law enforcement, printed on the order:

YOU SHALL USE EVERY REASONABLE MEANS TO ENFORCE THIS RESTRAINING ORDER. YOU SHALL ARREST, OR, IF AN ARREST WOULD BE IMPRACTICAL UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, SEEK A WARRANT FOR THE ARREST OF THE RESTRAINED PERSON WHEN YOU HAVE INFORMATION AMOUNTING TO PROBABLE CAUSE THAT THE RESTRAINED PERSON HAS VIOLATED OR ATTEMPTED TO VIOLATE ANY PROVISION OF THIS ORDER AND THE RESTRAINED PERSON HAS BEEN PROPERLY SERVED WITH A COPY OF THIS ORDER OR HAS RECEIVED ACTUAL NOTICE OF THE EXISTENCE OF THIS ORDER.

To a person reading those words without a law degree, their meaning seems plain.

The notice did not say officers may enforce the order, or that they should consider doing so. It said they shall. In everyday language, and usually in legal drafting, that word signals a command rather than an option. The notice also addressed situations in which an arrest was impractical. When officers had probable cause to believe the order had been violated or that a violation had been attempted, and the restrained person had been served or otherwise received actual notice, the language directed officers to make an arrest or seek a warrant.

That wording was not unique to Jessica’s order. It tracked a Colorado statute, one of the many mandatory-arrest laws states adopted in the 1980s and 1990s after cases like Tracey Thurman’s showed what unchecked police discretion could mean in domestic violence calls. Legislators adopted these laws to restrict police discretion and reduce the likelihood that domestic violence complaints would be dismissed as private family matters.

For Jessica, those words were the point of the order: a written instruction she could show police when she needed them.

Whether “shall” meant what it appeared to mean would become the central legal question of her case.

The Evening of June 22, 1999

At approximately 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. on June 22, Simon took the couple’s three daughters, Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie, from outside Jessica’s home. According to the Inter-American Commission’s later findings, no midweek visit had been arranged.

When Jessica realized the girls were missing, she suspected Simon had taken them. At approximately 7:30 p.m., she called the Castle Rock Police Department. Two officers came to her home. She showed them the order and asked them to enforce it. According to the allegations later recited by the Supreme Court, the officers said there was nothing they could do and told her to call again if the children had not returned by 10:00 p.m.

At 8:30 p.m., Jessica reached Simon by phone. He said he had taken the girls to an amusement park in Denver. Jessica called the police again and asked them to have someone check for him at the amusement park and put out an all-points bulletin. According to her complaint, the officer refused and again told her to wait until 10:00.

At 10:10 p.m., the girls were still gone. Jessica called the police again; this time, they told her to wait until midnight.

At approximately 12:10 a.m., after going to Simon’s apartment and finding no one there, she called the police. She was told to wait for an officer. When no officer arrived, she went to the police station herself. She then filed a report.

According to the complaint, the officer who took that report made no reasonable effort to enforce the order or locate the girls. Instead, he went to dinner.

The Inter-American Commission later counted eight contacts between Jessica and the Castle Rock Police Department that night and into the next morning. It described the response as fragmented, uncoordinated, and unprepared.

This was not a single missed call. It was a sequence of opportunities.

The Hours When Intervention Was Still Possible

It is easy to examine this case retrospectively, knowing how it ended, and assume that everyone involved should have anticipated the outcome. That is not a fair standard. Officers cannot predict every act of violence, and not every protection-order violation escalates to a fatal outcome.

But the absence of certainty is not the absence of risk.

Three young children had been taken without an arranged visit. A court order governed the contact. Their mother repeatedly reported that they had not been returned. She provided a possible location and identifying information. The delay grew from hours into the middle of the night.

Domestic violence is often minimized because of the very relationships that define it. Conduct that would alarm police if a stranger were responsible can seem less urgent when the person involved is a spouse or parent: the children are “with their father”; the conflict is “between spouses”; the issue belongs in family court. Yet family relationships do not cancel protection orders. They do not make coercive control harmless. And they do not turn an unarranged removal into an ordinary custody disagreement.

The police did not need certainty about Simon’s intentions to take the reported violation seriously. They needed a coordinated response proportionate to the information Jessica was giving them.

Three Children Found Dead

At approximately 3:20 a.m. on June 23, Simon drove to the Castle Rock police station and opened fire. Officers returned fire and killed him. Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie were found dead inside his truck.

Many summaries of the case state as settled fact that Simon killed the girls before arriving at the station. That was also the factual account the Supreme Court recited from Jessica’s complaint. But the later international human rights proceedings exposed a serious problem: authorities had not adequately established the time, place, and precise circumstances of the girls’ deaths.

Before the Inter-American Commission, Jessica’s advocates argued that the official investigations focused on the police shooting of Simon and summarily concluded that he had killed the girls before the shooting, with little evidence offered to support that conclusion. The Commission found the investigations conducted by authorities inadequate. Eleven years after the deaths, it observed, Jessica still did not know the cause, time, and place of her daughters’ deaths. Its conclusion was not that another person had killed the girls; it was that the state had failed to conduct the kind of thorough investigation necessary to give the family reliable answers, violating their right to judicial protection.

That distinction matters. Responsible true-crime writing should not replace an incomplete investigation with speculation. What can be said with confidence is devastating enough: Jessica repeatedly sought help; her daughters were later found dead; and their family was left without a complete accounting of what happened to them.

The Lawsuit

Jessica sued the Town of Castle Rock under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the same federal civil-rights law Tracey Thurman used. It allows people to seek remedies when a person acting under state authority deprives them of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law.

Her argument was not simply that the police should have done more. Negligence alone is usually not enough to create a federal constitutional claim. She argued that Colorado had given her a specific entitlement to have the restraining order enforced. Because the order and the state statute used mandatory language (“shall use every reasonable means,” “shall arrest,” or seek a warrant), she contended that this entitlement was a form of property protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

That may sound technical, because it was. The legal system translated a question about protection into a question about property.

The federal trial court dismissed the case. A panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Jessica’s substantive due-process theory but allowed the procedural due-process claim to proceed. The full appeals court reached the same basic result, finding that she had alleged a protected property interest in enforcement of the order.

Castle Rock appealed to the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court Actually Decided

On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 against Jessica in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales.

The Court held that she did not have a constitutionally protected property interest in police enforcement of the restraining order. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia reasoned that “a well established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes,” even when a statute uses words such as “shall.” The majority also questioned whether enforcement could qualify as a property interest at all. Drawing on an earlier Supreme Court decision, O’Bannon v. Town Court Nursing Center (1980), Scalia distinguished between benefits directly owed to an individual and benefits received indirectly through government enforcement actions.

Because the Court found no protected property interest, it did not decide whether Castle Rock’s practices had provided too little process. The judgment of the Tenth Circuit was reversed.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Stevens argued that Colorado’s mandatory-arrest provisions were written precisely to end the police discretion the majority relied on. Legislatures had adopted such laws because discretion in domestic cases had too often meant inaction. Reading “shall arrest” as if it meant “may arrest,” he suggested, undid the reform the law was designed to accomplish. The dissent also argued that the Court should have deferred to the Tenth Circuit’s reading of Colorado law, or asked the Colorado Supreme Court to interpret it, rather than substituting its own.

What the ruling did decide

The Court decided that the Colorado order and statute did not give Jessica a property interest protected by the federal Due Process Clause. That meant she could not pursue this particular § 1983 procedural due-process claim against the town.

What the ruling did not decide

The Court did not decide that protection orders are meaningless. It did not say that officers are free to disregard every state enforcement law without consequence. It did not determine that the police response that night was competent or appropriate. And it did not prevent states from creating stronger duties or remedies under state law. The majority expressly noted that states remain free to build systems that make police departments accountable under state law.

The ruling was narrower than the phrase “police have no duty to protect” suggests. But for survivors seeking a federal remedy after nonenforcement, its practical effect was still severe.

The order still told police what to do. The Supreme Court ruled that its enforcement was not a property right Jessica could vindicate through the federal Due Process Clause.

Thurman, DeShaney, and Castle Rock

Castle Rock built on an earlier Supreme Court decision that shapes nearly every case like it.

In DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989), the Court considered a young boy, Joshua DeShaney, who was beaten by his father so severely that he was left with permanent brain damage. County social workers had received repeated reports of abuse but did not remove him from the home. The Court held that the Due Process Clause generally does not require the government to protect people from private violence. The Constitution, the majority reasoned, limits what the state may do to people. It does not, as a rule, guarantee that the state will protect them from each other.

Read together with last week’s case, the decisions draw an uneven map:

• Thurman (1984, federal district court): Police protection practices may violate the Equal Protection Clause when officials intentionally discriminate against domestic violence victims, including by treating domestic violence complaints differently because of discriminatory classifications or policies.
• DeShaney (1989, Supreme Court): The government generally has no constitutional duty to protect anyone from private violence in the first place.
• Castle Rock (2005, Supreme Court): Even a court order directing police to enforce it does not give the protected person a federal constitutional right to that enforcement.

The result is that discrimination in protection can be challenged, but the absence of protection, standing alone, usually cannot.

From the Supreme Court to an International Human Rights Case

After the Supreme Court decision, Jessica brought her case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States. With the ACLU and other advocates, she filed her petition in December 2005. The Commission examines whether member states have met regional human rights obligations. It is not another level of appeal above the U.S. Supreme Court, and it cannot reverse a Supreme Court judgment.

In July 2011, the Commission issued findings in Jessica’s favor. It found that the United States had failed to act with due diligence, violating the right to equality and equal protection under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (Article II). It also found violations of the girls’ right to life (Article I) and their right to special protection as children (Article VII), and of the family’s right to judicial protection (Article XVIII) (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 2011).

The Commission treated the failed response not as an isolated mistake but as part of a broader pattern. Historically weak enforcement of domestic violence protection orders disproportionately affects women, who make up most people seeking those orders. In that context, institutional inaction can become a form of discrimination even without an officer openly expressing sexist intent.

The Commission recommended a serious and impartial investigation into the girls’ deaths and the systemic failures surrounding the order; reparations for Jessica and her family; stronger laws and enforcement mechanisms; better training and protocols; and reforms addressing children’s safety in domestic violence cases.

The decision was significant: an international human rights body had recognized that a government’s failure to respond diligently to known domestic violence risk can itself violate fundamental rights.

But recognition and implementation are different things.

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Two legal frames, two different answers

The Supreme Court and the Inter-American Commission are sometimes presented as if one said the police response was acceptable and the other said it was not. The comparison is more complicated.

That difference is not academic. The way a legal system frames harm determines what it can see. If the question is only whether a survivor owns an enforceable entitlement to police action, systemic disregard may fall outside the claim. If the question is whether state institutions responded to gender-based violence with due diligence, the same conduct becomes central.

What a Protection Order Can—and Cannot—Do

A protection order can be an essential part of a survivor’s safety plan. Depending on the jurisdiction and the terms of the order, it may prohibit contact, establish distance requirements, regulate parenting arrangements, and create legal consequences for violations.

In some cases, a protection order can require the restrained person to surrender firearms. Federal law also prohibits firearm possession by individuals subject to certain qualifying domestic violence protection orders. In United States v. Rahimi (2024), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that restriction in an 8–1 decision, affirming that individuals found by a court to pose a credible threat to another person’s physical safety may be temporarily disarmed.

It can also create a record. That record may matter to police, prosecutors, schools, employers, housing providers, or later courts.

But a protection order is not a physical barrier. It cannot predict escalation. It cannot guarantee an officer will understand its terms. It cannot solve staffing shortages, poor communication between jurisdictions, missing information in databases, or bias that causes domestic violence to be treated as a private family problem.

For that reason, obtaining an order should never be treated as proof that a survivor is now safe, or as the final item on an institutional checklist. Safety may also require individualized planning, confidential shelter, advocacy, firearm enforcement where authorized, secure child-exchange arrangements, workplace or school notification, technology-safety measures, and rapid response when an order is violated.

The survivor should not have to coordinate all of that alone.

What Changed—and What Did Not

Jessica’s case helped move the conversation beyond the existence of laws and toward the quality of their implementation. Advocates used the Inter-American Commission’s decision to press federal, state, and local officials for reforms. In 2015, the Department of Justice issued guidance on identifying and preventing gender bias in law enforcement responses to domestic violence and sexual assault. The department updated that guidance in 2022 (Office on Violence Against Women, 2022).

The guidance sets out principles for agencies to build into policy and training, including recognizing and addressing bias, properly classifying reports, identifying the predominant aggressor, treating survivors with respect, investigating thoroughly, holding officers accountable, and collecting and reviewing data. The 2022 update added emphasis on trauma-informed response and on how gender bias intersects with other forms of discrimination.

Those principles matter. They also remain guidance, not a replacement for enforceable law, adequate staffing, effective supervision, or accountability after failure.

At an October 2014 hearing before the Commission, Jessica’s advocates reported that the United States had made almost no progress on the recommendations, including the call for a full investigation into the deaths of Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie. “For 15 years, I have asked my government to investigate who killed my daughters, and when and where they died,” Jessica said (American Civil Liberties Union, 2014).

That tension persists. National policy can set expectations and fund improvement. Much of the actual response still depends on state law, local agencies, dispatch practices, supervisors, and the choices made during one urgent call.

Where the Case Stands Today

Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales remains an important precedent limiting federal procedural due-process claims based on the nonenforcement of protection orders. The Inter-American Commission’s 2011 decision remains a landmark recognition of governments’ responsibility to respond to domestic violence with due diligence.

The international ruling did not overturn the Supreme Court’s decision or provide Jessica with an enforceable domestic judgment. In subsequent advocacy, Jessica and her supporters continued to call for a thorough investigation into her daughters’ deaths and accountability for the institutional failures identified by the Commission.

Together, the proceedings illustrate the difference between recognizing a human rights violation and securing an effective remedy for it.

Jessica continued as an advocate, insisting that Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie be remembered not merely as the facts behind a Supreme Court citation, but as children whose lives placed obligations on the adults and institutions around them.

Why It Still Matters

Jessica’s case exposes the distance between formal access and actual safety.

A system may count the number of orders issued and call that progress. But the more meaningful questions come later: Was the order served? Could dispatchers retrieve it? Did officers understand it? Was a reported violation documented? Did anyone assess the danger? Were children treated as potential victims rather than as property in a parental dispute? Did agencies across jurisdictions communicate? Was the survivor believed before the emergency became undeniable?

It also shows how delay can become a decision. Each instruction to wait may sound temporary. Accumulated over hours, those delays define the response.

And the case demonstrates why careful legal language matters. Saying “police have no duty to protect” may capture the anger people feel after reading the decision, but it collapses several doctrines and can make reform seem impossible. The law is more fractured than that. Federal constitutional remedies may be limited while state statutes, agency policies, civil-rights law, tort law, and international standards impose different duties or offer other forms of accountability.

Precision does not soften what happened. It shows where change is still possible.

Final Thoughts

Jessica Lenahan’s story is not an argument against seeking a protection order. It is an argument against asking a piece of paper to do the work of an entire system.

The court had issued an order intended to protect Jessica and her children. Jessica reported what she believed was a violation. She called, waited, called again, searched, went to the station, and kept asking for help.

The failure was not hers. It was that the institutions around her treated action as postponable until there was almost nothing left to protect.

A protection order can be a vital tool. But it becomes protection only when courts, dispatchers, officers, advocates, and communities give its words practical force. “Shall” has to mean more than an aspiration. A right has to survive contact with the system responsible for honoring it.

Rebecca, Katheryn, and Leslie deserved that kind of protection.

So does every family holding an order and waiting for someone to take it seriously.