Tell me if I’m wrong – I let a group of bikers walk my client into a courthouse and now I’m facing a formal complaint from the judge. Am I the asshole?
I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for six years. I’ve had forty-something cases. Every single one involves a kid who didn’t ask to be in the system. My current case is a seven-year-old boy named Dustin who has to testify against someone in his own family, and for the past three weeks he’s been refusing to get out of the car when his foster mom brings him to the courthouse.
I mean REFUSING. Shaking, crying, going completely stiff. He’s seven.
His foster mom, Tammy Jessup (51F), connected me with a group called Shields on Steel. They’re a motorcycle club – big guys, big beards, leather vests – and what they do is accompany kids to court. They’ve done it in other counties. They stand with the child, walk them in, sit behind them in the gallery. The whole point is the kid feels safe because these enormous people are visibly, physically on their side.
I vetted them. I called two other advocates who’d worked with them. I talked to their chapter president, a guy named Dale, for over an hour. No criminal records among the escorts. They follow every courthouse rule. They don’t speak during proceedings. They just show up and stand there.
So Monday morning, I arranged for four of them to meet Dustin in the parking lot before his testimony.
It worked. For the first time in three weeks, Dustin got out of the car on his own. He walked between Dale and another member named Greg, holding both their hands. He was still scared – I could see his chin going – but he was WALKING.
We got to the courthouse entrance. Security checked them through. No issues. Dustin made it all the way to the bench outside the courtroom where witnesses wait.
Then Judge Alderman came around the corner.
She stopped dead. She looked at the four bikers, then at me, then back at them. She pulled me into the hallway and said, “What the hell is this? You’re turning my courtroom into a circus.”
I told her who they were and what they do. She cut me off. She said, “This is a court of law, not a motorcycle rally. You should have cleared this with me. This is completely inappropriate and I’m reporting it.”
I said, “Your Honor, with respect, he wouldn’t come inside without them.”
She said, “That is NOT your call to make.”
Dustin was sitting on that bench watching me get dressed down through the glass. Dale had his hand on Dustin’s shoulder. The kid was calm for the first time in weeks.
My supervisor called me that afternoon. The judge filed a formal complaint. My colleagues are split – half of them said I should have gone through proper channels, gotten written permission, maybe a motion. The other half said a seven-year-old who can’t walk into a building needs whatever gets him through that door.
Tammy told me if they pull me from Dustin’s case, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. She said he asked her last night if “the big guys” would be there next time.
I got the complaint letter yesterday. I opened it at my kitchen table after my own kids were in bed. The first line said my conduct was “unbecoming of an officer of the court” and that disciplinary review would determine whether I remain on the case. But the last paragraph – the one about what the judge is recommending as a consequence – I read it three times because I couldn’t believe what she was asking for.
She wasn’t just recommending I be removed from Dustin’s case. She was recommending –
What She Actually Wanted
Permanent decertification.
Not a suspension. Not a reassignment. The end of my career as an advocate. Six years, forty-something kids, and she wanted to pull the license entirely. The letter used phrases like “pattern of unilateral decision-making” and “disregard for judicial authority.” Like I’d smuggled contraband into a federal building. Like I’d done something to Dustin instead of for him.
I sat there for a while. My kitchen was quiet. I could hear the refrigerator running.
The letter was three pages. I read all of it twice more and then I set it face-down on the table because I didn’t want to look at the letterhead anymore.
Here’s the thing about Judge Alderman. I’ve appeared before her maybe eight or nine times over the years. She’s not a bad judge. She runs a tight courtroom. She cares about procedure the way some people care about religion, and I’ve always respected that even when it slowed things down. But she doesn’t know Dustin. She’s seen him as a name on a docket. She has never sat in a parking lot watching a seven-year-old hyperventilate in the backseat of a 2009 Honda Civic.
I have. Three Mondays in a row.
What Three Mondays Looks Like
The first time, Tammy called me from the parking lot at 8:40 a.m. I could hear Dustin in the background. Not screaming exactly. More like this low, animal sound, like something had cornered him. I drove over and sat in the backseat with him for forty minutes. We missed the window. The session had to be postponed.
The second time, his caseworker tried. She brought a stuffed dog he likes. She talked to him for twenty minutes through the car window. He made it to the curb and then folded. Sat down on the concrete with his arms around his knees. A court officer came out to see what was happening. Dustin looked at the uniform and that was it, we were done.
The third time, Tammy called me the night before. She said, “He hasn’t slept. He keeps asking me what will happen if he doesn’t go.” And I didn’t have a good answer for her because the honest answer is that the case could get derailed, the person he’s testifying against could walk on a technicality, and a system that was supposed to protect him would have failed him in about six different ways simultaneously.
I didn’t say that to Tammy. I said we’d figure something out.
That’s when she mentioned Shields on Steel. She’d seen them at a courthouse two counties over, walking a little girl in pink sneakers through a crowd of reporters. She’d saved the news clip on her phone for months, waiting to see if we’d ever need them.
We needed them.
Dale
I want to say something about Dale, because the judge saw four men in leather and drew her conclusions, and I don’t think that’s fair.
Dale Pruitt is fifty-three years old. He runs a landscaping company in the off-season. He started Shields on Steel’s local chapter after his niece had to testify in a custody case when she was nine and he watched her shake through the whole thing with nobody next to her. He said it took him ten years to stop thinking about her face that day.
When I called him, he asked me two questions before anything else. He asked how old Dustin was, and he asked whether Dustin had any sensory issues he should know about so the guys wouldn’t overwhelm him. That was it. That was his intake process. Not liability waivers, not press opportunities. Just: how old, and what does he need.
He showed up Monday in a clean vest, no insignia that could read as threatening, boots that didn’t clank. Greg, the other one who held Dustin’s hand, is a former EMT. The other two, whose names I never got, stood about ten feet back the whole time and let Dustin set the pace.
When Dustin finally grabbed Dale’s hand in that parking lot, Dale didn’t make a thing of it. He just started walking. Slow. Matched Dustin’s stride exactly.
That’s not a circus. That’s a man who knew what a scared kid needed and delivered it without being asked twice.
The Complaint and What It Actually Says
Here’s where my colleagues who think I should have filed a motion aren’t entirely wrong.
I know the process. I’ve been doing this long enough to know you clear things with the court. You don’t just show up with four strangers on testimony day and hope nobody asks questions. That’s not how it works, and I knew it wasn’t how it works, and I did it anyway.
Because I ran the math in my head and it went like this: if I file a motion, it takes days, minimum. Maybe longer. Alderman’s clerk is backed up, I know that from experience. The hearing date gets pushed. Dustin spends more time in this suspended state where he knows he has to testify eventually but doesn’t know when. His sleep gets worse. Tammy told me he’d started wetting the bed again after months of being fine.
A week’s delay to do it right, versus doing it now in a way that actually works.
I chose the kid.
Maybe that’s the mistake. Maybe that’s the thing that makes my colleagues who say I should have gone through channels technically correct. But I keep coming back to the image of Dustin on that bench, Dale’s big hand on his shoulder, the kid finally still. Finally not shaking. Looking around the hallway like the world was something he could exist in.
That happened. I made that happen.
And now I might lose my certification over it.
What Tammy Said
She called me the morning after I got the letter. I hadn’t told her yet, but someone had. The court system is small. People talk.
She was crying, which she tries not to do in front of me because she thinks she needs to be professional about this. She’s been Dustin’s foster mom for fourteen months. She’s not a crier.
She said, “They can’t take you off his case. He trusts you. Do you know how hard that is? For a kid like him to trust someone?”
I told her I was going to fight it. That I’d already called my advocate organization’s legal contact and we were drafting a response.
She said, “He asked me again this morning. About the big guys. He wanted to know if Dale would come back.”
I didn’t say anything for a second.
She said, “I told him probably yes. Was that wrong?”
I said no. I said it wasn’t wrong.
I don’t actually know if it’s true. I don’t know what the next court date looks like, whether I’ll still be on the case, whether Alderman will allow Shields on Steel back in the building under any circumstances. But I know Dustin slept Monday night for the first time in weeks. Tammy texted me at 9 p.m. to say he’d gone down without a fight, no nightmares, out cold by eight-thirty.
Where It Stands
My organization is behind me. Mostly. My direct supervisor, a woman named Carol who has been doing this work for nineteen years, told me off the record that she would have done the same thing. On the record, she’s being careful. She has to be. The complaint is real and the process is real and she can’t just wave it away.
The legal response goes in Thursday. It’ll argue that my role as advocate is specifically to act in the child’s best interest, that nothing I did violated courthouse security protocols, that Shields on Steel has a documented record in other jurisdictions, and that the outcome – a child successfully entering the courthouse and providing testimony – speaks for itself.
Whether that’s enough, I don’t know.
I keep thinking about that letter. Unbecoming of an officer of the court. I’ve been turning that phrase over for two days now. Unbecoming. Like I embarrassed the building.
Dustin testified. He sat in that room and he said what happened to him. He did it because four guys in leather vests stood in a parking lot and held out their hands and let a scared kid decide when he was ready.
I don’t know what’s unbecoming about that. I’ve looked at it from every angle I can think of and I still don’t see it.
The review board meets in three weeks. I’ll know more then.
Until that morning, I’m still on the case. I’m still Dustin’s advocate. And if Tammy calls me from a parking lot before that, I’ll be there.
—
If this one’s sitting with you, share it. Someone else needs to read it.
If you’re curious about more of my adventures with these incredible kids and the unexpected folks who show up for them, check out My Seven-Year-Old Witness Said “He’s Bigger Than You.” I Didn’t Know What to Do With That., My CASA Kid Gripped My Hand So Hard He Drew Blood. Then I Saw What Was Behind the Bikes., and The Biker in the Back Row Stood Up and Left Before I Could Finish.
