Critics slam ‘failure-to-protect’ laws

OKLAHOMA CITY — After Robert Braxton Jr. was convicted of beating his girlfriend’s children, he was sentenced in 2006 to probation and two years already served in jail while awaiting trial for the abuse, which included choking, punching and breaking the femur and ribs of a 3-month-old daughter.

The children’s mother, Tondalao Hall, was never accused of hurting her kids. But her penalty was much harsher: 30 years in prison for failing to tell authorities about the abuse. She could be incarcerated into her 50s and miss their childhoods altogether while their abuser moved on long ago.

The state’s Pardon and Parole Board recently declined to shorten the sentences of Hall and three other women with similar stories, alarming women’s rights groups and bringing attention to “failure-to-protect” laws in Oklahoma and a few other mostly conservative states that critics say can lead to harsher punishments for abused and frightened mothers than for child abusers themselves.

“That’s a pattern that we’re seeing all too often,” said Megan Lambert, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, which represents Hall, who she says Braxton also beat and psychologically abused her.

Every state has laws designed to protect children, but only six — Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina and West Virginia — have failure-to-protect laws or similar statutes that carry possible life sentences, though Texas’ equivalent carries a maximum 99-year term.

Oklahoma’s law also doesn’t make exceptions for parents who don’t report abuse out of fear for their own safety and is disproportionately applied to the mothers of abused children, Lambert said.

Failure-to-protect laws, like child neglect and endangerment statutes, are designed to protect vulnerable children from abuse and harm but have unintended consequences, said Danielle Ezell, a board member for Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform. The group plans to ask the Legislature to amend state laws to prevent abused women from being penalized for being unable to protect their children from abusers.

“Maybe we’re doing more harm than good,” she said.