ICYMI: When Guns Have More Rights than Victims
ICYMI: When Guns Have More Rights than Victims
The death of Christina Wilson feels less like a unique failure and more like a microcosm of every oversight that has chipped away at justice
A few weeks ago we shared the heartbreaking story of Christina Wilson, an abused child who was ultimately killed by her stepfather, Juliano Santana, last May. The article tries to answer the questions central to the tragic outcome: Why was Santana eligible for bail? Why was his bail set so low? Why couldn’t Santana’s GPS monitoring device alert his probation officer in time to prevent the abduction? Above all, why did Santana have access to a gun?
It is a detailed, if frustrating, example of the ways loopholes and legal continuances in our system — especially involving restraining orders and gun laws — are often flippantly executed.
In case you missed it, here is the article, originally posted here on July 29.
By: Michal Goldstein, Agatha V. Nyarko, Caroline E. Light
Christina Wilson was a 16-year-old high schooler with an interest in science, looking ahead to college. Her family and friends described her as a “radiant soul” and “full of life.” But her childhood was marked by abuse.
She was only 11 when her stepfather, Juliano Santana, began sexually assaulting her. He told her “not to be scared” and not to tell her mother. If she disobeyed, he warned her, he would abandon the family. At first, she complied. One of Christina’s three sisters knew though; they shared a diary in which she wrote about her abuse. Sometimes their stepfather would assault Christina at night while her sister slept in the top bunk.
On September 7, 2021, her mother found out about Santana’s abuse and went to the police. He was arrested the same day, facing six counts of aggravated rape of a child. Christina had endured nearly two years of abuse.
At Santana’s arraignment, the Middlesex District Attorney’s office requested that cash bail be set at $100,000. Instead, the judge set it at $30,000. Santana was released with a GPS monitoring device and a no contact order with Christina. He was also prohibited from unsupervised contact with any minor, including his own children.
Massachusetts criminal law requires that a defendant go to trial within a year of the arraignment. Often, this obligation is circumvented when a judge grants continuances and extensions. Santana’s defense team asked for two extensions — one to better prepare for the trial and obtain a Portuguese interpreter for Santana, and another related to the defense attorney’s medical complications.
In the end, Santana’s trial date was set for almost three years after his arraignment — July 29, 2024.
But Christina won’t see her abuser brought to justice today, or any day. On May 30, 2024, he broke his protective order, abducting Christina while she was walking home from school. When they discovered she was missing, Christina’s family called the Acton police. Santana’s probation officer located them using his GPS monitoring device, but in the end, it was too late.
By the time police arrived, Santana had already killed himself and Christina using a firearm that he should not have had.
Christina’s case presents many urgent questions. Why was Santana eligible for bail? Why was his bail set so low? Why couldn’t Santana’s GPS monitoring device alert his probation officer in time to prevent the abduction?
Above all, why did Santana have access to a gun?
Firearm “Protections”
By comparison to other states, Massachusetts has relatively strict gun regulations. Mandatory licensing, safe storage requirements, comprehensive safety training, and a ban on the purchase and trade of assault weapons have contributed to the state’s low rates of firearm-related injury and death, compared to states with lax firearm restrictions.
The Commonwealth’s gun restrictions for domestic abusers are especially strong, particularly after the recent enactment of the Act Modernizing Firearm Laws. This new legislation strengthens Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), popularly known as “red flag” laws, adding medical practitioners to the list of people who can petition to remove firearms from a person designated as a risk to themselves or others.
Restraining orders and ERPOs can both help someone in Christina’s position. Restraining orders are most commonly recommended because they are designed to help survivors who share space and family with their abusers navigate their way to a safe separation. Restraining orders can, but don’t always, mandate firearm surrenders by the defendant.
In eastern Massachusetts, where Christina’s case was heard, often a judge will automatically request that the defendant relinquish any firearms. In cases where a defendant may need a firearm for their line of work (for example, if they serve as a police officer or security guard), the defendant may contest the obligation to surrender their firearm.
On a surface level, ERPOs — which require the immediate surrender of a defendant’s firearm(s) — seem like the safer choice for victims who are threatened by armed abusers. Yet, restraining orders have several comparative advantages over ERPOs and are often favored by prosecutors.
Restraining orders establish the victim as a legal “protected party” who has a right to remove children and shared property from their abuser. ERPOs can remove firearms from credibly accused defendants, but they do not provide this additional protection. They cannot require a defendant to stay away from victims, move out of shared space, or relinquish custody of children.
Another important difference between restraining orders and ERPOs is their burdens of proof. Restraining orders require that victims provide evidence of past abuse, so any history of violence may be sufficient for a firearm surrender. ERPOs, on the other hand, require that the claimant bring evidence of future intent or threat of violence — they must show that the defendant will do harm if allowed access to firearms. In domestic violence cases, a history of past violence is often easier to prove, so restraining orders can be obtained more quickly.
When a judge orders a firearm surrender, whether through a restraining order or an ERPO, the survivor has essential work to do, beyond providing evidence of the defendant’s past or future violence. As a part of their testimony, they must identify how many guns the accused has, what types, and where they are stored.
Without a criminal investigation (which restraining orders do not trigger), police do not have warrants to search for weapons on a defendant’s property — they instead rely only on the testimony of the petitioner.
Beside the victim of abuse and their family, law enforcement may (though they don’t always) check if the defendant has any registered guns within the state. Even then, police can easily miss unlicensed firearms and those purchased in states with permitless or “constitutional” carry laws.
In essence, the victim must produce enough information about their abuser’s guns to protect themself.
The Victim’s Burden
When Christina’s mother, Olena Wilson, filed a restraining order against Juliano Santana, here is what she would have needed to do to keep Christina safe.
When filing the restraining order, Christina’s mother would have needed to inform prosecutors or police how many and what types of guns Santana possessed. In turn, law enforcement would have needed to check which guns Santana owned under Massachusetts jurisdiction; and they might have tried — even though they would likely have failed — to assess whether he owned any ghost guns, unreported guns, guns from other states, or guns borrowed from other people. The judge would have needed to order Santana to turn his guns in to the local police station.
Santana would have needed to comply. If he hadn’t, he would have gone to court, where the judge would tell him that the police would ask for his guns again, and order him to relinquish them. The transaction would have relied on Santana’s good faith; realistically, since restraining orders are filed in civil, not criminal court, the police would not be able to obtain a warrant to search his home.
Restraining orders and ERPOs are well-intentioned efforts to protect abuse victims from further harm. Yet, they are often only as far-reaching as is the victim’s knowledge.
Even if Christina’s mother had known how many guns Santana had and where he kept them, the process of removing them could still have taken considerable time. And, even if Santana had complied with the restraining order and relinquished his guns, he could have acquired a new gun in the three years after his arrest. We don’t know whether Santana even had a gun at the time of his arrest; it’s possible that Olena never imagined that Santana would kill Christina with a firearm and never even requested a firearm surrender in the first place.
Either way, the burden to protect Christina fell on her own family’s shoulders, not only in exposing her abuser, but also in preventing her abuser from obtaining and using a lethal weapon against her.
Part of a Pattern
Christina’s case exposes the limitations of restraining orders in a firearm-saturated landscape. Her death feels less like a unique failure and more like a microcosm of every loophole and oversight that has chipped away at justice.
Our legal system, supposedly built to uphold law and order and to protect the vulnerable from harm, instead shields perpetrators while neglecting the safety of their victims.
Christina came forward to report her abuse, and her family believed her, as did the police and judges tasked with keeping her safe. She was the “perfect” victim. She should have been easy to protect. But even the most clear-cut cases are made difficult in a nation without serious and consistent firearm regulation across states.
Massachusetts is a leader in passing legislation that protects victims from harm. Yet, it cannot fill the loopholes created by the abundance of “ghost guns” and out-of-state firearms that are relatively easy to obtain.
Perhaps a solution-oriented path forward should involve analyzing when and why perpetrators inflict harm on their partners or family members. For example, professor of nursing and public health at Johns Hopkins, Jacquelyn Campbell, developed a 20-question danger assessment to predict harm within the home, informing victims’ understanding of their levels of risk. Others seek safeguards for those accused of abusing loved ones, who often — as in Santana’s case — are released on bail without any rehabilitative resources.
Still, efforts to protect survivors from lethal violence are only as strong as their weakest link. In a nation where guns are so readily available to perpetrators, senseless loss of life becomes unavoidable. Today in particular, we mourn Christina and other would-be survivors for whom our legal protections were not enough.
Michal Goldstein is a rising senior at Harvard University from Palo Alto, California. She studies English with a secondary in Psychology, and is working with Harvard Professor Caroline Light on a project investigating the individual self-defense justification for firearm possession and use, specifically the race and gender implications of armed self-defense.
Agatha Nyarko is a rising junior at Harvard University from New York City. She is concentrating in Social Studies, and is conducting research for Caroline Light on the intersection of self-defensive firearm justifications and domestic violence.
Caroline Light is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Harvard’s Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her book, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Beacon Press, 2017) provides a critical genealogy of our nation’s ideals of armed citizenship.
Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash.