In June 1999, the estranged husband of Colorado citizen Jessica Gonzales abducted and killed their three young daughters―Leslie, Katheryn, and Rebecca. Though Gonzales had repeatedly forewarned the local police about the unsafety of her children, the police refused to enforce a restraining order against her husband. Gonzales therefore filed a Fourteenth Amendment due process lawsuit against the police; but in June 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that she had no constitutional right to police enforcement of the restraining order. In 2008, her U.S. remedies exhausted, Gonzales filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), asserting human rights violations by the police for failing to protect her and her children, and by the U.S. courts for failing to provide a remedy.
