A4 Safety Alliance is working to transform family court systems to protect children from abuse and prevent institutional harm. We combine survivor-informed research, expert collaboration, and policy advocacy to expose systemic failures and advance trauma-informed, evidence-based reforms.
Media & press inquiries: evangeline@a4safetyalliance.org
“Unfortunately, courts often don’t do a great job recognizing signs of abuse and degree of risk due to lack of high-quality training on abuse subjects for judges and court professionals.”— Evangeline Stratton, A4 Safety Alliance, former senior managing attorney at Family Violence Appellate Project Washington
“The court should know how to protect children, and they should be ruling in favor of children and not just protecting a parent’s rights.”— Tamara Emerson, A4 Safety Alliance | End Child Abuse WA, for The Center Square
“In light of the recent events that have shaken our state my heart is grieving. We are here because every child deserves to be safe and we know change begins when we come together, encourage and care.”— Tamara Emerson, Executive Director of A4 Safety Alliance and co-founder of End Child Abuse WA
“We haven’t yet committed to adopting a systemic view and approach to child safety. So we need to take what have already been identified as risk and protective factors—particularly in abuse cases—and apply strategies from legislation to community-based support that prevent harm to children.”— Evangeline Stratton, Attorney, A4 Safety Alliance, for Scripps News
“The tragedy is not just about one family—it’s about a system that fails to prioritize child safety. Judges must be mandated to receive trauma-informed training on abuse and risk. Travis Decker should never have had unsupervised access. These girls should still be alive.”
“It enhances judicial discretion without any required judicial training and solidifies the false equivalency between abuse and other parenting behaviors.”— Evangeline Stratton, testifying against HB 1620 as introduced in 2025, via The Center Square
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Attorney Evangeline Stratton spoke to legislators about the urgent need for reform in family court custody proceedings, voicing strong opposition to HB 1620 as introduced in the House in 2025. She told lawmakers she feared the bill would decrease protections for survivors and their children.
Kayden’s Law protects children, parents and communities by requiring family judges to first consider the potential impact on children from domestic abuse before applying the traditional “best interests of the child” custody test. It would provide clear legal guidance for judges and bring federal funding to train Washington judges assigned to family law cases.
A bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers has called on the state to reform its AMBER Alert system. Rep. Amy Walen (D-Kirkland) said lawmakers have a “solemn responsibility” to face the question of how current judicial and law enforcement systems may have failed to protect Kayden and the Decker sisters.
Speaking to KUOW, Stratton noted that Washington was one of the first places in the U.S. to get domestic violence policy right by enacting the Domestic Violence Prevention Act in 1984—and that more people are becoming open to expanding that definition, particularly to include coercive control.
