A Houston mother accused of molestation claims a lifetime protective order violates her parental rights

After Houston mother Christine Stary was arrested in 2020 for beating her then-9-year-old son, her ex-husband Brady Ethridge wanted to prevent Stary from seeing or having direct contact with their three children for at least two years.

During months of protection order hearings, Ethridge testified about the March 2020 incident and several previous incidents in which he said the Old Man beat the children, forced them to sleep outside on the porch and abandoned one of his daughters on the edge of the house. road while driving back from Colorado.

Court records show the children called police at least six times and called Child Protective Services at least five times.

After hearing from the children, a Harris County District Court judge went a step further and issued a lifetime protective order. The old man will not be able to see his children or have direct contact with them for an indefinite period of time.

The old man hasn’t been officially terminated, but he says there’s no difference between that and a lifetime protection order. Now he’s asking the Texas Supreme Court to rule that the case needs to be retried based on a higher standard of proof.

“Deprivation of parental rights is referred to as the death penalty in civil cases,” said attorney Eva Guzman, who acted for Stary on Tuesday on behalf of the Family Freedom Project. “And this description fits because what is at stake is a basic liberty interest in the care, custody and control of our children.”

Stary and Ethridge finalized their divorce in 2018 and agreed that their children – all minors at the time – would spend half of their time with each parent. However, in March 2020, their son was hospitalized after Houston police were called to Stary’s home.

Court documents say the Old Man grabbed the back of the boy’s head, slammed his face into the wooden floor and carpet, and then continued to beat his bruised face until his nose began to bleed. Ethridge said he saw his son at the hospital with scratches, bruises, blood, dried scabs and nail marks on his skin.

The old man was arrested on suspicion of injury to a child, a third-degree felony, and given a permanent protective order until the end of the year. Stary was not notified that she faced a lifetime restriction of liberty, her lawyer said, and court records did not indicate that either.

The trial court can make a civil protection order lasting longer than two years if the judge finds evidence that a parent has committed conduct that constitutes a criminal offense – regardless of whether the person has been charged or convicted.

The primary issue for Supreme Court justices to decide is how much evidence is needed to separate a parent like Stary from her children for life.

The issuance of a civil protection order for a period of two years or more requires “preponderance of evidence”, meaning that something has been proven to be more likely than not to be true. Termination of parental rights requires a higher burden of proof – first-instance courts must find evidence “clear and convincing“

Because a protective order is essentially a termination of Stary’s parental rights, the trial court should have used a different legal procedure requiring a higher standard of evidence to prove the order was necessary, Stary’s lawyer, Holly Draper, told justices.

Draper also claims that Stary was not given the opportunity to properly defend himself against the domestic violence allegations in court, and that the evidence presented was not sufficient to prove that domestic violence had occurred and was likely to occur in the future.

“In a termination proceeding, it’s a completely different ballgame than what occurred here,” Draper said. “Usually these cases take 12 to 18 months, you have to make discovery and have the opportunity to present a full defense.”

Stara was also not allowed to testify in connection with allegations of domestic violence committed by her ex-husband.

The judges recognized the seriousness of the permanent injunction to protect the Old. Judge Jimmy Blacklock said that if he had the chance, he would rather go to prison for two or three years than be banned from approaching his children.

“We have all these complex constitutional law doctrines that have been developed to protect people’s liberty interests when there is a risk of imprisonment for committing a crime,” Blacklock said. “And I wonder if, in the end, what was done to this woman – whether she deserved it or not – is actually much worse and a greater intrusion on her freedom than a prison sentence.”

Marshall Bowen was the public defender defending the appeals court ruling – Ethridge did not file a response to his ex-wife’s appeal.

Bowen agreed with Blacklock’s hypothetical, but argued that the Old Man still retains certain parental rights, including access to his children’s medical and school records. She allowed two attempts to change the protection order. Therefore, he stated that this was not the end of Stara’s parental rights, as her lawyers claimed.

“I think the purpose of a protective order is to protect individuals, children, victims of domestic violence, and a whole lot of people from an abuser in a short period of time,” Bowen said.

Draper, Stary’s lawyer, also argued that the law could be changed to require a judge to apply a higher standard of proof – and a criminal conviction – when considering a protective order longer than two years. However, the judges had doubts whether this argument protected the rights of the parent over the rights of the child.

Draper said a balance needs to be struck and there are other ways to protect children and other victims of domestic violence.

“A lifelong protection order is not necessary to protect children from immediate danger,” she said.

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