Alec Mater was seven years old. His sister Lydia was six. In May 2024, they were killed by their father during a court-granted unsupervised parenting visit in Surprise, Arizona. Their mother, Hope Hooton, has since turned her grief into a law that changes how Arizona family courts handle cases like theirs.
Hope Hooton and her husband, Brock Mater, were going through a divorce when Brock was hospitalized for a psychiatric crisis in October 2023 and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Hope filed for an order of protection asking the court to bar him from having firearms and in-person contact with the children. After a November 2023 hearing, a judge instead ordered equal, unsupervised parenting time, along with a psychological evaluation and medication monitoring. In May 2024, during one of those unsupervised visits, Brock killed both children and then himself.
Hope has said publicly that no evidentiary hearing specifically addressed domestic violence in her case, and that the court never fully evaluated the combination of coercive control, suicidal and filicidal ideation, and acute psychiatric instability before granting Brock unsupervised time with the children. According to the Center for Judicial Excellence, two to three children are killed by a parent every day in the United States, often in families that had active involvement with family courts.
Hope began speaking publicly about filicide — the killing of a child by a parent — and started the platform "Hope in the Pain" along with the podcast Voices Against Filicide, where she talks with other families who have lived through similar tragedies. She worked directly with Arizona lawmakers to draft House Bill 2995, known as the Alec and Lydia Act, which requires courts to specifically evaluate domestic violence, coercive control, and psychiatric risk factors before granting parenting time. On June 22, 2026, Governor Katie Hobbs signed the bill into law.
The Alec and Lydia Act changes what Arizona courts must find, document, and presume when domestic violence and mental health risk factors are present in custody cases involving children. Hope continues to advocate nationally for families navigating family court systems and for greater awareness of filicide risk factors — including strangulation, coercive control, stalking, and untreated mental illness.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).