How a former Aurora cop charged with raping his daughter led to his ex-wife being jailed for opposing court-ordered therapy

A Colorado mother is serving a seven-weekend jail sentence for opposing court-ordered reunification therapy between her two youngest sons and their father, Michael Hawkins.

Hawkins, a retired Aurora police sergeant, is facing charges for allegedly raping his biological daughter when she was five years old and sexually assaulting two adopted daughters. Despite confirmation of abuse by Child Protective Services, a Larimer County judge ruled that the mother, Rachel Pickerel-Hawkins’ sons must attend therapy aimed at repairing their relationship with their father.

During the time of the ruling, Pickerel-Hawkins was living in a domestic violence shelter with her children. The judge also ordered Pickerel-Hawkins to pay as much as $370 a week for the therapy sessions.

In the wake of her jailing, state lawmakers and advocates gathered at a rally last week demanding Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice Monica Márquez address what they call a “public health and safety crisis” in the state’s family court system.  At the rally, lawmakers submitted a petition, signed by 28 legislators and over 300 individuals, urging Márquez to take action.

Supporters have also raised over $70,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help cover Pickerel-Hawkins’ legal expenses and financial losses.

KGNU’s Alexis Kenyon spoke with Chris Osher from the Denver Gazette, whose investigation broke the story. Osher reports that judge jailed Pickerel-Hawkins after she objected to the court-ordered therapy.

Listen:

Read Chris Osher’s ongoing investigation for the Denver Gazette

Audio transcript edited for web:

Chris Osher:

So, when I say she was raising objections to the reunification therapy, she says that she originally had kind of agreed to the therapy but had been told that there would be an assessment of the appropriateness of it. And that she did not believe the therapist had done that assessment.

According to the children’s personal therapist, the therapy was actually causing harm to them. And so she began saying, “We need to find a better fit for the children,” that Christine Bassett wasn’t the appropriate therapist to do this work.

She said, financially, it was a hardship for her, and she would prefer a therapist that would take Medicaid. All of which led the magistrate earlier to say, “Well, I think you’re interfering with the therapy. You’re making the therapy not progress.” So, that magistrate held her in contempt and sentenced her to seven weekends in jail but suspended the sentence and told her, “You’re going to start complying.”

Eventually, there was an incident in July where, during a therapy session, Christine Bassett, the therapist, told her she had to leave the parking lot. The mother did not leave the parking lot. According to her, it had been her common practice to remain there to be ready to transport her children because she was court-ordered to do so. She didn’t want to leave and felt she had a right to be there.

There is a protection order restraining contact between her and her ex-husband. He showed up, and somehow they came into contact, so she called the police. The judge then decided to sentence her to jail.

She still maintains that the reunification therapy isn’t appropriate in this particular instance.

Again, part of what she has pointed out is that the father actually has said, well, yes, there was physical abuse of my older child, which I am not seeking custody of. I am seeking sole custody of the two youngest children. But he did say back in 2018, there was this incident in the pool.

The older child claims it was retribution for him actually confronting his father over sexual abuse of the sister. The father claims, well, yes, I did do this incident where I held him underwater to the point he thought he was drowning, but that was because my PTSD was triggered when he jumped in the pool and scared me.

And, you know, some people are saying, if he’s got a proclivity to violence in that instance, why would he not have a proclivity to violence with some of the children? He also said that he and his children played this game where they would hit each other in the testicles.

The children claimed that they felt that that was abuse. He claims it was more fun and games.

Well, and also, you know, this is not the first time Michael Hawkins has been documented to be violent. Before he left the Aurora Police Department in 2018, there was an incident that resulted in a settlement. Can you tell us about this and the context in which we are hearing about Michael Hawkins today?

Chris Osher:

Yeah, so, one, he’s gone out on a medical disability, so he’s no longer with the police department. He said his PTSD had become so severe, he couldn’t perform police work, and he had been placed on extended medical leave after failing a fitness-for-duty examination.

All of that followed a situation in which a woman’s husband had been shot. They were going to tow her car or something like that. Anyway, she ended up taken to the ground and repeatedly stomped on her head. Then she was arrested and spent eight days in custody with the allegation that she had assaulted Michael Hawkins, who was the police sergeant at the time.

Video subsequently surfaced that showed she had not initiated the violence. Aurora eventually settled the case, paying something like $335,000 to settle the lawsuit filed in federal court.

One thing that’s compelling about your investigation into Michael Hawkins is you have reports from his kids, who are now young adults. The daughter is 17. The son is now 19. And the daughter says that her dad, Michael Hawkins, raped her when she was a kid. And I think it’s important to say that and not sugarcoat it, because this is testimony that the judge and the magistrate both didn’t believe.

Chris Osher:

Yeah, so, in this particular instance, I didn’t talk to the children, but I reviewed forensic interviews with them. In those interviews, the daughter was adamant that, yes, he had raped her when she was of elementary school age, and that throughout her childhood, he would grope her, grab her by the breast, and touch her inappropriately.

The sons claimed, for instance, one of the sons had a girlfriend, and the girlfriend told him, never leave me alone with him, he’s being inappropriate in comments with me.

Now, the judge in the custody dispute said, well, you know, the children are claiming this, but I don’t know if it’s true just based on the claims of the children, despite Child Protective Services saying that they had confirmed this rape of the daughter, which has triggered some pushback from particularly Colorado lawmakers who have argued they want people to listen to the children in these custody disputes.

All of this is rooted in the idea that a parent can essentially turn a child against another parent by brainwashing them or planting thoughts into their head.

It’s a very disputed theory, though it has some sanction, particularly in Fort Collins, because up in Colorado State University, there is a professor who’s very well known and very much advocates the theory of parental alienation.

But, for instance, the United Nations has come out against it and says that it’s a theory that’s been used to actually protect abusers. Colorado lawmakers are increasingly saying they don’t think it has a lot of validity in custody disputes.

I guess what is so difficult to understand about the story is this is not the first time we’ve heard about Colorado’s family court putting kids and families in abusive, life-threatening situations. My question is, how is there not reform, and how is this continuing to happen?

Chris Osher:

I mean, so we did investigate pretty intensively the parental evaluation industry, which plays a large role in custody disputes and makes recommendations to judges when they’re court-appointed by a judge to help guide these custody decisions, and we just found shocking stuff.

There was one evaluator. You know, there was a Boulder mom I interviewed who actually lost custody of her children to foster care based on a parental evaluator who said she had a histrionic personality disorder primarily based on having her make a drawing of her holding her child. The evaluator interpreted the drawing, and it was used as justification to put her infant daughter into foster care and keep her there. Eventually, the child was sexually abused in foster care and returned to the mother.

Now it’s kind of morphed into this whole new area, which is reunification therapy, in which the children are forced to have contact with the father that they’re rejecting, or the mother that they’re rejecting.

Opponents of it say that it can be tremendously dislocating to a child, and in the most extreme circumstances, they say there should be absolutely no contact with the parent that the child is bonded with for a minimum of 90 days. This can end up being extended as long as the child isn’t complying.

They can be sent across state lines to reunification therapy.

In the most extreme circumstances, you run the risk of actually having an abusive parent have unfettered access to the child, and the child can’t talk to the parent who has been protecting them in the most extreme situations of it.

What is the methodology? How do you get a child who doesn’t feel safe around their parent to reunite? I mean, what does that even look like?

Chris Osher:

In this particular instance, there were allegations that the therapist was saying, well, you can’t have water unless you go get your father water. You need to forgive your father for us to make progress. And these children weren’t wanting to do that.

Now, I haven’t been able to… The therapist won’t talk to me, saying that ethics of her profession prevent her from talking about the therapy sessions. There is a hearing scheduled on the 12th, so maybe some of that will come out.

Yeah. I mean, I wonder what will come out. I can’t imagine being a mom having to support this.

Chris Osher:

Well, and I’ve talked to children who have gone through this, and some who have aged out and have said, this was just abusive to me. And it’s left trauma in my adult life. It’s just caused me extreme pain. Like, I’m anxious all the time. I’m not… you know, this has reverberated throughout my life. And, you know, I wish they would have just listened to me and my mom and protected me.

So before I let you go, currently, Michael Hawkins, the former Aurora police officer, is out on bail. The wife, on the other hand, did she have bail?

Chris Osher:

Yeah. I mean, the other thing that is somewhat interesting about that is she was sentenced without there actually being a lawyer representing her. The final sentence from the judge overseeing the custody, you know, she didn’t have legal representation.

So, I will say, there is a hearing coming up on the 12th. Now that criminal charges have been filed against the father for child sexual abuse and physical abuse, the Larimer County judge says, “Let’s have a hearing to determine the appropriateness of reunification therapy given the changed circumstances.” But the last order said, “I still do not believe that I should remove the jail sentence. I want her to serve those seven straight weekends.”

Chris Osher is a senior investigative reporter for the Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics. 

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