But perhaps most importantly, Sherlock met with Gov. Tom Wolf and pushed for legislation to mandate supervised visitation for parents with a history of violence or abuse. Along the way, she gave birth to two more children, while working full time as an emergency room nurse at Capital Health in Trenton.
Now, four years after losing her daughter, Sherlock’s hard work has come to fruition. On Wednesday, the Yardley resident sat at the White House and watched as President Joe Biden talked about reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, which was amended to include Kayden’s Law, requiring professional supervision if a judge finds ongoing risk to a child. “No one — no one — regardless of gender or sexual orientation, should experience abuse. Period,” Biden said that day.
When he was finished, Biden beelined through the crowd to Sherlock and embraced her not once, but twice, and said: “I’ve lost, too.” He teared up. She teared up. Onlookers did as well. Afterward, Sherlock went to dinner with actress Angelina Jolie, who was in attendance and“We are finally being heard. Congress is saying that this is a problem and we need to do something about it by validating what we’ve been saying and screaming for years,” Sherlock told me Thursday. “We’ve been heard.
Each state has its own custody statute with different ways of dealing with these issues. The challenge is to get them to update their laws to be more protective of children and make them aware of federal funding that can be utilized. Pennsylvania is ahead of some others. On Wednesday,