I’ve been a CASA volunteer for six years. Court-appointed special advocate. I speak for kids who can’t speak for themselves in abuse and neglect cases. The child I’m assigned to right now – I’ll call him Drew (8M) – has a hearing every few weeks, and every single time, he has to walk past the man who hurt him in the hallway. Eight years old. Forty-three pounds. Shaking so hard his teeth chatter in July.

Drew’s been in foster care since January. His biological father, Todd (31M), has supervised visitation rights and shows up to every hearing with his girlfriend and his mother and sometimes his cousin, and they all sit in the lobby like it’s a family reunion. They stare Drew down. They don’t say anything. They don’t have to. Last month Drew threw up in the bathroom before we even got to the courtroom door.

I tried everything through the right channels. I asked the caseworker about a separate entrance. She said she’d “look into it.” I filed a request with the court coordinator to stagger arrival times. Got a form email back. I talked to Drew’s attorney, Megan Holt, and she agreed it was a problem but said her hands were tied. Three hearings went by. Nothing changed.

My neighbor, Patty Kowalski (58F), rides with a group called Shields on Wheels. They’re a motorcycle club – mostly retired teachers, nurses, a couple vets – and all they do is show up for kids. They escort children into courthouses so they don’t have to walk in alone. Background-checked. Trained in trauma response. They’ve done it in four other counties in our state.

I called Patty. She brought seven riders.

Thursday morning they were waiting in the courthouse parking lot when I pulled in with Drew and his foster mom, Brenda. Drew saw them and his eyes went wide. Patty knelt down and said, “Hey buddy. We’re gonna walk with you today. Nobody’s gonna bother you.”

Drew grabbed Patty’s hand. He didn’t shake ONCE.

We walked through the lobby. Todd’s mother stood up. Todd’s girlfriend started recording on her phone. Todd just sat there with his jaw tight. Nobody said a word to them. The bikers didn’t even look at them. They just walked Drew straight to the courtroom.

Drew sat through the entire hearing without crying for the first time since his case started.

Then Monday morning I got a call from the judge’s clerk. Todd’s attorney filed a motion claiming I orchestrated an act of “witness intimidation” in a public courthouse. The judge wants to see me in chambers. My CASA supervisor, Diane (57F), told me I should have gone through her first. She said I “overstepped.” She said the whole program could lose credibility.

My friends and family are split. Half of them say I did what the system wouldn’t. The other half say I made myself the story instead of Drew.

Diane forwarded me the judge’s letter yesterday. I opened it and my hands went numb. The first line read: “Regarding the conduct of volunteer advocate on Case No. 24-JV-00891, this court finds – “

What the Letter Actually Said

I stood in my kitchen at 7:14 in the morning reading that opening line four times.

My coffee went cold. I didn’t notice.

The letter was two pages. Judge Patricia Wren, Family Division, had reviewed Todd’s attorney’s motion and pulled the courthouse security footage. She had also, apparently, pulled my written requests. The ones I’d filed with the court coordinator. The form email I’d gotten back. The notes from my conversation with Megan Holt that Megan had logged in the case file.

The second page started with: “This court finds no evidence of intimidation, witness tampering, or improper conduct on the part of the volunteer advocate.”

I had to sit down.

She wasn’t summoning me to reprimand me. She was summoning me because she wanted to ask me, directly, why her court coordinator had failed to respond to a documented safety request for a child under court protection. And she wanted that answer on the record.

Todd’s attorney’s motion was denied. Same day it was filed.

What Diane Said When I Told Her

I called Diane before I called anyone else. That felt right. She’d been worried, genuinely worried, not about me specifically but about the program. Six years I’ve worked with her. She’s not a bureaucrat. She’s just someone who’s watched good-intentioned people blow up cases by going rogue, and she carries that.

She was quiet for a long moment after I read her the relevant section.

“Okay,” she said.

That was it. Just okay.

Then: “Send me the full letter.”

I did. She called back twenty minutes later. Her voice was different. Looser.

“She pulled your requests,” Diane said.

“Yeah.”

“You documented everything.”

“I always document everything. You taught me that.”

Another pause. “I owe you an apology.”

I told her she didn’t. She said she did. We agreed to disagree on that and moved on, which is basically how Diane and I handle most things.

The Part Nobody Asks About

Here’s what I keep thinking about, the part that doesn’t fit neatly into the “did she do the right thing” debate my relatives are apparently having over group text.

The three hearings before I called Patty.

Hearing number one: Drew held my hand so tight in that lobby that I had a bruise on my knuckles for four days. He didn’t say anything. He just squeezed and kept his eyes on the floor and walked. I kept my body between him and Todd’s family as best I could. It wasn’t enough. Todd’s mother said, loud enough, “There he is.” Just that. There he is. Like he was a lost item she’d been looking for.

Hearing number two: Drew threw up. I already mentioned that. What I didn’t mention is that afterward, while I was helping him rinse his mouth in the bathroom sink, he asked me if Todd was going to take him back home. I said I didn’t know. He nodded like that was the answer he expected. Eight years old and already fluent in the language of adults who don’t give straight answers.

Hearing number three: Drew stopped talking in the car on the way there. Just went silent around mile four. Stared out the window. Brenda tried to make conversation. He didn’t respond. By the time we pulled into the parking garage he had his arms wrapped around himself, rocking slightly. Not dramatically. Just this small, private rocking. Like he was trying to hold himself in.

I filed the staggered arrival request the afternoon of hearing number three.

Nobody responded.

So yeah. I called Patty.

What Todd’s Family Actually Did

I want to be precise about this because the word “intimidation” got thrown around and I think it’s worth being clear about who was intimidating whom.

Shields on Wheels wore their vests. They walked next to Drew. They did not speak to Todd’s family, look at Todd’s family, gesture toward Todd’s family, or position themselves between Todd’s family and any exit. They walked in a group with a child through a public lobby and into a courtroom. That’s it.

Todd’s girlfriend recorded them on her phone. Which, fine, public building, legal to do. But the recording was apparently submitted to Todd’s attorney as evidence of “organized intimidation.” Seven people in vests walking quietly next to an eight-year-old.

Todd’s mother, the same woman who said there he is loud enough for Drew to hear, submitted a written statement saying she felt “threatened and surveilled.”

I have tried very hard to have some basic human charity toward Todd’s family. Tried to remember they’re people, that this situation is complicated, that families in dependency court are often dealing with their own trauma and fear. I’ve tried.

But that woman watched a forty-three-pound kid shake his way through three courthouse lobbies and then claimed she felt threatened when seven retired teachers showed up to walk next to him.

I don’t have charity left for that. I’m fresh out.

What Drew Said After

The hearing itself was procedural. A review of the current placement, some discussion about Todd’s compliance with his service plan (partial, for the record), scheduling for the next hearing. Drew wasn’t required to speak. He sat next to Brenda with his hands in his lap and watched the ceiling fan.

On the way out, Patty was waiting in the hallway. She’d stayed. Drew walked straight to her and said, “Are you gonna be here next time?”

Patty looked at me. I looked at Patty.

“We can work on that,” Patty said.

Drew thought about this. “Okay,” he said. And then he asked if any of them had motorcycles he could see because he’d never been on one and his friend Marcus at school said they were loud.

Patty spent twenty minutes showing him bikes in the parking lot. He touched the handlebars on one like it was something fragile. Brenda took a picture. Drew is not a kid who smiles much, but he smiled then. Small. Crooked. Real.

That’s the picture I keep on my phone now.

Where It Stands

Judge Wren’s chambers meeting is scheduled for next Thursday. Megan Holt is coming. Diane is coming. I’m coming. The court coordinator, from what I understand, has been asked to prepare documentation of how safety accommodation requests are processed.

Shields on Wheels has been formally invited, through Megan, to submit their program credentials for court review. Four other counties already use them. Judge Wren, it turns out, had never heard of them.

She has now.

Diane told me yesterday that two other CASA volunteers in our region reached out to her this week. They both have kids in similar situations. They both want to know how to contact Patty.

I gave them her number.

Todd’s attorney filed a second motion requesting I be removed from the case. That one’s also pending. My CASA supervisor submitted a response. So did Megan. I haven’t read either of them because Diane told me not to, that it would just make me anxious, and she’s probably right.

I’m not removed yet. I’m still Drew’s advocate. That’s the part that matters.

Am I the asshole? I genuinely don’t know how to answer that cleanly. I went outside the process because the process wasn’t protecting him. I didn’t tell Diane first. I didn’t wait for another form email. I called a retired nurse named Patty who owns a motorcycle and knows how to kneel down and talk to a scared kid, and I asked her to show up.

Drew didn’t shake.

I keep coming back to that. One morning out of how many where he didn’t shake.

The system will do what the system does. The review will happen. The motions will get ruled on. Diane will send emails and I’ll fill out forms and the court coordinator will maybe, possibly, figure out how to stagger arrival times before the next hearing.

But last Thursday, for forty minutes in a courthouse lobby, Drew walked like he wasn’t afraid.

That’s what I made myself the story for.

If this one hit close to home, pass it along. Someone you know might need to see it.

For more stories about standing up for what’s right, check out what happened when I Read Her Own Words Back to Her, Out Loud, in Front of the Principal or when I Walked Into a Job Interview That Wasn’t Mine and Sat Down Across From a Man I’d Put in Prison. And if you’re looking for another unbelievable family tale, you won’t want to miss when My Mother Told Me My Brother Died Nine Years Ago. He Was Standing in My Son’s School Parking Lot.