Veteran lost rights to her children through a rarely scrutinized legal loophole.

When Ashley checked herself into a homeless shelter for female veterans, she had the well-being of her two young children in mind.

Her symptoms from posttraumatic stress disorder had become unmanageable. For years, she had been able to suppress the trauma from her 17month deployment to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army, as well as the sexual assault she said she suffered at the hands of two men in her unit. But trauma, in time, always boils over.

She wanted to get treatment so she could stay a good mother for her children. She didn’t expect that her time away meant she would lose her parental rights through a section of Colorado law that affords parents few legal protections.

If Ashley had abused or neglected her children while they were in her care, she would have had access to a bevy of state resources: a caseworker, a treatment plan to resolve the problems involved and reunite the family, and a free, courtappointed attorney for parents who can’t afford to pay. But because the new partners of her children’s fathers filed stepparent adoption claims, Ashley had nothing.

It’s a loophole that exists only in cases where stepparents make custody claims.

That discrepancy is what Ashley’s attorney, Katayoun Donnelly, hopes the Colorado Supreme Court will address. Donnelly filed a petition to the state’s highest court July 5 asking them to decide: Should Ashley, and other parents like her, have an appointed attorney when their parental rights are at stake? Is it unconstitutional that Colorado’s laws give so many protections to parents accused of mistreatment and not to those facing stepparent adoptions, even though both types of cases can lead to the same penalty?

Donnelly said the termination of parental rights should be considered the equivalent of the death penalty in civil law. It changes lives forever.

“We’re dealing with the oldest, most fundamental right,” Donnelly said. “What is more important than that fundamental relationship? It shapes you, makes you who you are.”

The Denver Post agreed not to use Ashley’s real name because she is a victim of sexual assault and to protect the privacy of the two minor children involved in the case. Her story is supported through court documents reviewed by The Post.

Stepparent adoption proceedings are a sliver of a large swath of civil cases in Colorado in which participants are not afforded a right to a publiclyfunded attorney. Although defendants in criminal cases have a right to a public defender, those who cannot afford a lawyer when facing life-altering consequences, such as losing a home to foreclosure or a child through custody changes, in civil court are left to wade