Tell me if I’m wrong – I let six members of a motorcycle club into a restricted family services building to sit with a seven-year-old boy during his testimony, and now I’m facing a formal review.
I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for nine years. I’ve walked 43 kids through the worst days of their lives. I have NEVER had a complaint filed against me until last Tuesday.
The boy’s name is Devin. He’s seven. He weighs maybe fifty pounds soaking wet. And he was supposed to walk into that family services office and sit across from the man who put cigarette burns on his arms and tell a room full of strangers what happened to him.
I’d been assigned to Devin’s case for four months. His foster mom, Tammy Birch, 58, had been doing everything right – therapy twice a week, keeping his routine stable, making sure he ate. But every time we talked about the hearing, Devin shut down. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t look at me. He’d pull his sleeves over his hands and go somewhere far away.
Three weeks before the hearing, Tammy called me. She said Devin had started sleeping again. She said he’d been spending time with a group called Shields on Wheels – a motorcycle club that volunteers specifically to support kids going through abuse cases. They’d been showing up to his soccer games. Eating dinner at Tammy’s kitchen table. One guy named Big Rob taught Devin how to change a tire in the driveway.
Devin told Tammy he’d go to the hearing if Big Rob could come.
I called the family services office. Spoke to the coordinator, a woman named Patrice Moody. I explained the situation. I told her about the organization, their background checks, their track record in three other counties. She said she’d “look into it.”
She never called me back.
The morning of the hearing I pulled into the parking lot and Devin was standing by Tammy’s minivan, shaking. Not crying. Just shaking, like his whole body was vibrating. Six Shields members were parked in a row behind him on their bikes. Clean shirts. Credentials on lanyards. Quiet.
Devin was holding Big Rob’s hand.
I walked them all inside.
Patrice met us in the hallway. Her face went white. She said, “You can’t bring THESE PEOPLE in here.” Right in front of Devin. Right in front of all of them.
Devin’s grip on Big Rob’s hand tightened so hard his knuckles went pale.
I said they were approved support persons under my authority as his advocate. Patrice said I didn’t have that authority. I said I wasn’t asking. She said, “This is a government building, not a clubhouse.”
Big Rob didn’t say a word. None of them did. They just stood there, a wall of leather and calm behind a seven-year-old boy who was shaking so hard his teeth were clicking.
I looked at Patrice and said, “This child is going to walk into that room with people who make him feel safe, or he’s not walking in at all.”
She stepped aside.
Devin testified for forty minutes. He spoke in full sentences. He made eye contact with the interviewer. He only stopped once, looked back at Big Rob sitting in the second row, got a nod, and kept going.
It was the strongest testimony I’ve seen from a child his age. Maybe any age.
Two days later I got the letter. Formal complaint. Unauthorized persons in a restricted area. Violation of protocol. Potential termination of my CASA certification.
My friends and family are split. Half of them say I did what any advocate should do. The other half say I overstepped, that I put my judgment above the system, and that if everyone did what I did the whole process falls apart.
The review board hearing is next Thursday. Tammy called me this morning crying. She said Devin made something for me and asked her to drive it over. She said it was a drawing.
I told her to bring it. When she handed it to me and I unfolded it –
What Was On That Paper
It was crayon. Of course it was crayon.
Six figures on motorcycles, all in black. Big ones, drawn the way seven-year-olds draw things – heads too large, wheels perfectly circular like someone traced a coin. And in the middle of all six riders, one small figure. Brown jacket, which is the one I always wear to hearings. Stick arms. A smile that took up half the face.
Written above it in the handwriting of a kid who’s still learning how to hold a pencil: MY FRENDS AND MY LADY.
That’s what he calls me. His lady. I don’t know when that started. It just did, maybe six weeks in, and I never corrected it because why would I.
I stood in my driveway holding that drawing for a long time. Tammy was still in her car. I could see her watching me through the windshield, not getting out yet, giving me a minute. She’s thoughtful like that. Fifty-eight years old, three biological kids grown and gone, and she takes in the ones nobody else will take. She’s been doing it for eleven years. Devin is her ninth.
She finally got out and we stood there in the cold and she said, “He asked me three times if I thought you were going to be okay.”
Seven years old. Worried about me.
What Four Months on Devin’s Case Actually Looked Like
People who haven’t done this work think the job is paperwork and courtrooms. And yeah, there’s plenty of that. But the actual job, the thing nobody tells you about when you sign up, is just showing up. Consistently. Same face, same voice, same jacket. Over and over until the kid decides you’re real.
With Devin, it took eight weeks.
The first time he talked to me without Tammy in the room, we were sitting on her back porch. He was picking at the label on a juice bottle. I wasn’t asking him anything. I’d learned not to ask him things directly, because direct questions made him go flat and quiet like something had been switched off. So I was just sitting there, looking at the yard.
He said, out of nowhere, “My arms don’t hurt anymore.”
I said, “I’m really glad.”
He said, “They did for a long time.”
I said, “I know.”
That was it. That was the whole conversation. But something shifted after that. He started making eye contact. He started saying goodbye to me when I left instead of just going back inside.
By month three he was saving me pictures he’d printed off the internet. Mostly motorcycles, which is how I found out about Shields on Wheels before Tammy even called me. He’d bring these printouts and explain them to me with total seriousness, like he was briefing me on something important. The engine size. Which ones were louder. Why Big Rob’s was the best one.
Big Rob’s real name is Robert Pruitt. He’s 44. He drove trucks for fifteen years, then his nephew came through the system and somebody brought Shields on Wheels to his attention. He’s been doing it for six years. He’s got background checks in four counties. He does not look like someone who volunteers with traumatized children. He looks like someone you’d move away from in a parking garage.
Devin thought he was the greatest person alive.
What I Actually Knew About My Authority
Here’s the thing my friends who think I overstepped don’t fully understand: the CASA framework is intentionally flexible. That’s the whole point. A court-appointed special advocate exists specifically because the system is too rigid to respond to individual kids. We are the gap-fillers. We are the ones who are supposed to use judgment.
I’ve read the guidelines more times than I can count. The language around support persons is not as clean as Patrice made it sound in that hallway. I had a reasonable argument. It wasn’t airtight, but it wasn’t nothing.
What I didn’t have was Patrice calling me back.
That’s the part that still makes my jaw tighten when I think about it. I gave her three weeks. Three weeks to make a phone call, look at the Shields on Wheels documentation, talk to her supervisor, do literally anything. She didn’t. And then she showed up in that hallway and said “these people” in front of a seven-year-old boy who was already shaking.
I don’t think Patrice is a bad person. I think she saw leather vests and got scared and then got defensive because she’d dropped the ball and didn’t want to admit it. That’s human. I understand it.
But Devin was standing right there.
The Forty Minutes
I can’t share what Devin said in that room. I won’t. That’s his, not mine.
What I can tell you is that I’ve sat in on thirty-something of these interviews over nine years, and most of them are painful in a specific way, this stop-and-start, coaxing, backing-off kind of painful where the child tells you something and then looks at you like they’re waiting to be punished for saying it. The interviewer has to be so careful. So slow. It’s the right approach and it’s still brutal to watch.
Devin was different.
He was scared. He was absolutely scared. But he was there. He wasn’t somewhere far away. When he stopped and looked back at Big Rob, it wasn’t because he was shutting down. It was like he was checking that the ground was still solid. Got the nod. Turned back around.
Kept going.
The interviewer, a woman named Carol who’s been doing this longer than I have, caught my eye afterward in the hallway. She didn’t say anything. She just did this small nod, the kind that means something specific when you’ve been in this work long enough.
It meant: that was real. That was good. That’s going to hold up.
What the Review Board Is Actually Reviewing
The formal complaint lists three violations. Unauthorized persons in a restricted government facility. Failure to obtain documented approval before the hearing date. Conduct unbecoming a court officer.
That last one is the one that burns.
I’ve got nine years. I’ve got 43 kids. I’ve got a file of thank-you letters I keep in a shoebox under my bed because I don’t know what else to do with them and throwing them away seems wrong. I have never been written up. I have never missed a court date. I showed up to a hearing once with a 102 fever because the kid needed a familiar face and there was nobody else.
Conduct unbecoming.
My supervisor, a guy named Dennis who’s been in this system for twenty years and has seen everything, called me the day after the letter arrived. He said, “I’m not going to tell you what you did was by the book.” He paused. “I’m also not going to tell you it was wrong.” He said he’d be at the review board. He said he’d speak.
That meant something.
The people in my life who think I overstepped, I hear them. I do. They’re saying: you don’t get to decide which rules apply to you. They’re saying: the system has to function for everyone, not just the cases where you’re personally invested. They’re saying: what happens when the next advocate uses your precedent to do something actually harmful?
These are not stupid arguments.
But I keep coming back to Devin in that parking lot. Shaking. Fifty pounds. Holding on to a man in a leather vest like he was the only solid thing in the world.
The system did not make Devin feel safe. Big Rob did. And I had to decide, in about thirty seconds, whether the system’s comfort was worth more than Devin’s.
Thursday
I’m going in with documentation. The Shields on Wheels background check records. The emails I sent Patrice. The timestamp on my voicemail to her office. Carol’s notes from the interview, which I’ve been told she’s submitting voluntarily.
I’m also bringing the drawing.
Not as evidence. Not officially. I’m just going to have it with me because I want to remember exactly what I was working for when someone in that room starts talking about protocol.
Tammy texted me last night. She said Devin asked if he could come to my hearing to say something. She said she told him it didn’t work that way. He apparently thought about that for a minute and then said, “Can I write her a letter instead?”
She said she’d help him.
I don’t know what the board is going to decide. I genuinely don’t. Dennis thinks I’ll keep my certification with a formal reprimand. My own read is that it could go either way, and I’ve made my peace with both. Not happy peace. Restless, grinding peace. But peace.
What I know is this: Devin testified. He spoke in full sentences. He looked the interviewer in the eye and he told the truth and it’s going to hold up in court and that man who burned his arms is going to face what he did.
That happened because a kid felt safe enough to speak.
I’ve got the drawing on my kitchen table. Six motorcycles and one lady in a brown jacket, all of them smiling with their enormous crayon faces.
I’m not moving it.
—
If this one got to you, pass it on. Some stories deserve more than one set of eyes.
If you’re wondering what happened next, you’ll want to read about why She Grabbed the Biker’s Hand and Said “She Knows My Mom’s Name”, or discover how My Neighbor Was Everything This Street Feared. He Showed Up With Charcoal and Burned It All Down. For another story where rules are bent for the right reasons, check out She Pressed Her Face Against the Glass and I Saw It for the First Time.
