Everything in her life stopped. Just. Like. That.
No more gymnastics class and swimming lessons. No more back-to-school shopping trips. No more mother of three children.
Sherlock’s oldest child was murdered by her father sometime between Aug. 5 and 6 of last year.
“It doesn’t seem real still,” the Lower Makefield woman said. “The person I was prior to this is gone.”
In her place is someone focused on seeing her 7-year-old daughter did not die another failed family court statistic.
Kayden Mancuso was found bludgeoned to death on Aug. 6, 2018, inside the Philadelphia home of her father, Jeffrey Mancuso. After killing his only child during a court-ordered weekend visit, Mancuso penned angry suicide notes left on his daughter’s body before he died by suicide. Her grandfather and stepfather, Brian Sherlock, found the little girl’s body after Mancuso failed to bring her home.
The family did not mourn quietly.
They appeared everywhere demanding answers, especially from the Bucks County judge who issued his final custody order less than three months before her murder. As a result, Kayden’s murder gained international attention and focused new public scrutiny on the family court system and its handling of disputed custody cases like the 18-month battle involving Sherlock and Mancuso.
The family maintains Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Trauger failed Kayden when he granted her father unsupervised visits without requiring he get mental health treatment, as a court-ordered evaluation recommended. Mancuso had a history of violent and erratic behavior. There were no allegations that he abused Kayden, but Kathryn Sherlock had an active protection from abuse order against him.
Kayden was the 23rd Pennsylvania child killed by a parent involved in a separation or custody dispute over the last decade, according to the Center for Judicial Excellence, a California nonprofit which tracks those statistics. She is one of four deaths in the state where there was prior family court involvement.
Over the last year, the family has continued its mission to reform the family court system in Pennsylvania. When she wasn’t working as an emergency room nurse in Trenton, Sherlock was in Harrisburg, where she met with lawmakers and child justice advocates learning everything she could about how laws changed.
Sherlock called the family court system an overburdened, broken network where life and death decisions are cloaked in secrecy and lacking accountability, and where the primary focus is about what parents want over what is best for the safety and welfare of the children.
“Dogs have more rights than children,” Kayden’s aunt, Heather Giglio, said.
Family court reform advocate Danielle Pollack credits new legislative interest and attention in family court operations to the willingness of Sherlock and her family to speak publicly about their experiences. It’s a candor that often does not happen, she said.
“She is giving voice to a lot of protective parents, mostly moms, who are in the system but cannot speak,” said Pollack, an ambassador for Families in Crisis for CHILD USA, a Philadelphia think-tank focused on child issues. “Many people are drawn to her because they’d love to say what she is saying.”
Often parents are afraid to criticize courts fearing retaliation, Pollack said. Some judges issue gag orders preventing parents from discussing abuse allegations citing a need to protect the privacy of children, she added. Courts tend to move forward on custody and visitation before considering allegations of family abuse, she said.
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| Judge Jeffrey Trauger |
Pennsylvania last overhauled its child custody laws in 2010, which introduced a new requirement that Common Pleas judges address 16 custody factors and explain decisions about them in final custody orders. Past violent and criminal behavior involving a parent are among the factors judges must consider, but the law views those allegations on the same level as factors such as distance between parents’ homes or availability of extended family when deciding custody.
Reformers like Pollack want credible abuse allegations the first priority, before custody and visitation is considered. It’s among the bullet points that Bucks County lawmakers will be including in a bill currently being drafted. State Sen. Steve Santarsiero, D-10, of Lower Makefield, and Reps. Tina Davis, D-141, of Bristol Township, and Perry Warren, D-31, of Newtown Township, are expected to introduce “Kayden’s Law” when the General Assembly session resumes in September.
The proposed bill has been in the works for five months and it is still undergoing final tweaks to make sure it can withstand constitutional challenges, Pollack and the lawmakers said.
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| Kayden and Jeffrey Mancuso |
Among the legislation’s hallmarks is the establishment of an evidentiary hearing process to investigate the validity of abuse allegations. Louisiana was the first state to implement the process in child custody cases last year, Pollack said. The proposed bill would allow a parent to file a verified pleading, a sworn statement under the penalty of perjury, alleging abuse, Pollack said.
“The idea is to take the current statute that does not give the court guidance and set a clear and aggressive standard for protecting children,” Santarsiero said. “The key concept is to make sure the safety of the child is central to the court’s analysis and give the courts more guidance when considering these cases. That is lacking in the current law.”
The draft bill also calls for every-other-year mandatory training for family court judiciary members and staff using evidence-based, current scientific research-backed resources on child abuse and trauma and family violence. The training would be added to existing continuing education requirements for judiciary and family court attorneys. Judges could not serve in family court without first completing the training under the bill, Pollack added.
That pervasive lack of understanding of family violence and child abuse within the family court system is what Kayden’s family believes sealed her fate.
Trauger had no professional experience with child custody matters when he was assigned to family court after his 2016 appointment to the Bucks County bench. His previous private practice work focused on the areas of banking, commercial, real estate and civil law. He was re-elected to a 10-year term of office in 2017.
Trauger has not commented publicly on the case since Kayden’s murder; he released the Sherlock-Mancuso custody case file including custody evaluator reports, psychological evaluations, and full court transcripts of the three hearings held. In his final order, he gave Sherlock primary custody of Kayden and reduced visitation for Mancuso from four-day weekends to overnight visits every other weekend. He also urged, but did not mandate, that Mancuso seek professional psychological help as part of granting unsupervised visitation.
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| Pallbears carry Kayden's casket |
With three open Common Pleas judge seats up for grabs in Bucks County this year, Sherlock, who had never voted in a primary election before, immersed herself in the race. She and her family researched the 10 primary candidates, requesting meetings, and questioning their legal experience. On election day, Sherlock and her family canvased polling places passing out fliers. They featured a school picture of Kayden and urged voters to consider the person, not the political party.
“Vote like your child’s life depended on it. Kayden’s did,” the flier read.
Two of the four candidates the family supported in the primary — Democrats Charissa Liller and Jessica Vanderkam — scored ballot positions for the general election.
While Sherlock is considered the face of the family court reform movement, her sister Heather Gigilo has been equally as outspoken as the founder of Kayden’s Corner, an online resource center for parents experiencing custody difficulties.
Gigilo is in the process of obtaining federal nonprofit status for the charity she accidentally started to help sell T-shirts to raise money to buy a memorial bench for her niece.
After others organized fundraisers for memorials, the family decided to create a foundation whose mission is to reform the family court system and raise awareness of the prevalence and impact of domestic violence on children. Last week more than 200 people — including state lawmakers and county judicial candidates — attended its first-annual golf fundraiser in Upper Makefield.
“Kayden represents the angel of the family court system,” Giglio said.
An angel that is always with them, she said.
In those old posts that pop up on Facebook. In the new bedroom that she never slept in, where her clothes and toys are arranged the way she left them. When the family goes to a restaurant, they ask for a table for 12, though there are only 11.
“This is our new reality,” Sherlock said. “I don’t want anyone to forget her.”
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