On a warm spring day in 2010, Ray Ormond was walking up the driveway of a home to knock on the door. At the time, he was a Lindon City Police Officer, and with him was a Utah Division of Child and Family Services caseworker. They had a tip indicating a 3-year-old child in the house was being neglected and abused.
But when they knocked, the mother refused to let them in.
“She closed the door in our face, wouldn't let us in, wouldn't let us talk to herself or her child,” he said.
Ormond had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right.
“I knew that something else was the matter in that residence, but again, couldn't get eyes inside the house to be able to see, you know, neglect or abuse that had been going on in that residence,” he said.
But an instinct wasn’t enough to get a search warrant. He said he hit “roadblock after roadblock after roadblock” in the shape of the child's mother, who continued to refuse him entry into the home.
Ormond had to find another way and decided to walk the neighborhood and knock on doors, hoping to get a lead. One neighbor told him there was a lot of “short‑stay traffic”– basically, lots of people going in and out of the house. This was enough of a lead for him to build a drug distribution case, eventually collecting sufficient evidence to get a signed search warrant.
“So that case, all said and done, had been a couple months, about three months’ worth of work,” he said.
When he finally did enter the home, he said his worst fears were confirmed. The child had been physically abused, and there were allegations of sexual abuse made by the people who came to buy drugs.
According to Ormond, the child was eventually removed from the home and later adopted, and is now living a healthy life. However, he still resents the length of time he had to spend investigating drug charges. To him, it was time lost on saving the child from what they were forced to endure.
Ormond is now a sergeant in the Utah County Sheriff's Office. Child abuse cases were the hardest to work, he said, because of the emotional toll they take on investigators, particularly when they’re limited in what they can do.
Between 2019 and 2023, 53 Utah children died from abuse. Most abuse happens inside the home, but officers can’t enter without permission or a search warrant, which takes a lot of hard evidence and legwork.
Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla wants to change this. Her bill, SB124, creates an “investigative warrant” that the Division of Child and Family Services and law enforcement officers could file with the state juvenile court. Escamilla said this would do two things: allow services to see the child in question and determine which families need further investigation and which don’t. Pushback on the bill has centered around the latter, and potentially overstepping parental rights.
The Senate Judiciary, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee discussed Escamilla’s bill at the end of January. During public comment, Teena Horlacher, leader of the Davis County Conservatives, a conservative policy advocacy group, shared that her daughter was investigated after her 15‑month‑old had a seizure.
“It was a scary one,” she said, “they took her to the hospital, and they treated her.”
Horlacher told the committee that after the hospital visit, her daughter’s family was investigated by the Division of Child and Family Services for suspected abuse and neglect.
“They came back with the notice telling them that DCFS was going to be coming and taking the child they declared to be in imminent danger,” she said.
She said the ensuing legal fees cost the family nearly $100,000.
Horlacher urged lawmakers not to give the division additional authority that could intrude on Utah families, because her own has yet to recover from the ordeal.
Other members of the public echoed similar stories of overreach, where they feared their children would be taken.
When asked, Escamilla said that her bill would have actually helped some of these families because it would be a step between initial complaints and a full‑blown investigation. She told KUER that it’s meant for cases where investigators have tried several times to do a welfare check on a child and have been blocked by the parents or caregivers.
“Can we now expedite a juvenile court warrant for an investigative process, meaning it is not for removal,” she said. “It’s for actually going and checking. But it has to be because DCFS has enough information that there is a red flag — like, we need to do something.”
The Democratic senator sits on the Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel, a closed‑door group of legislators who review the worst child abuse cases in Utah to find policy gaps. She said that experience has shown her how “sophisticated child abuse is becoming,” with the use of isolation as a tool.
“We've seen also an increase in some of the ways some of these abusers are now removing children from people that can actually see them,” she said, pointing to the high-profile case of Gavin Peterson.
The 11‑year‑old from Weber County was starved to death by his father, Shane Peterson, and his father’s longtime girlfriend, Nichole Scott. He was pulled out of school and isolated for almost a year.
“It was very limited what the DCFS was able to do, and there were a lot of reviews on this case,” Escamilla said.
On the same day her bill passed out of committee to the Senate floor, a legislative audit was released that highlighted serious competency issues within the division.
Escamilla said she was disappointed with what the audit found, but just because there are problems doesn't mean the department doesn't need the extra tools to effectively investigate child welfare cases.
Sgt. Ray Ormond said there’s a careful balance between child welfare and parental rights, but he believes that if Escamilla’s bill had existed in 2010, they could have rescued the child in his case much sooner.
