Tell me if I’m wrong – I let twelve members of a motorcycle club into a police station to sit with a seven-year-old boy, and now I’m facing a formal complaint from the detective assigned to his case.
I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for six years. I’ve sat with dozens of kids through the worst days of their lives. I (42F) have NEVER had a complaint filed against me. Not once. And the one time I actually got it right – the one time a kid stopped shaking long enough to give his statement – that’s when they decide I crossed a line.
His name is Brody. Seven years old. Brown hair that sticks up in the back because nobody’s been brushing it. He was supposed to give a recorded statement at the Garfield County sheriff’s station last Tuesday about what happened in his foster placement. I’d met with him three times before to prepare. Every single time, he shut down. Wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t look at me. Just pulled his hoodie over his face and rocked.
The Thursday before, his school counselor called me. She said Brody told her he wasn’t scared of “the bad stuff” anymore because the motorcycle people came to his school and told him they’d be there whenever he needed them. She meant BACA – Bikers Against Child Abuse. They’d already assigned him a road name and everything. Called him “Turbo.”
I contacted the local chapter president, a guy named Doug Fenton who goes by “Wrench.” I asked if members could be present at the station when Brody gave his statement. Not in the interview room. Just in the lobby. So Brody could see them when he walked in and know they were still there when he walked out.
Wrench showed up with eleven others. Leather vests, patches, boots. They sat in those plastic chairs in the lobby and they were QUIET. Respectful. Didn’t say a word to anyone who didn’t speak to them first.
Brody walked in holding my hand. He saw them and his whole body changed. His shoulders dropped. He let go of my hand and ran to Wrench and Wrench knelt down and said, “We ain’t going nowhere, Turbo. We’ll be right here.”
Brody went into that interview room and talked for forty-seven minutes. FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES. This kid who wouldn’t give me three words.
Detective Morales came out after and pulled me into the hallway. His face was red. He said, “You brought a goddamn biker gang into my station without authorization.” I told him they were in the public lobby. He said it didn’t matter. He said their presence was “intimidating to staff” and “compromised the environment.” He said I had no authority to coordinate outside parties for a law enforcement interview.
My supervisor got the formal complaint yesterday. She’s split – she said what I did was “well-intentioned but procedurally inappropriate.” Half the advocates in my office think I’m a hero. The other half say I should have gone through official channels and that I put Brody’s entire case at risk if the defense argues the statement was made under unusual psychological influence.
My friends and family are split too. My brother said I was reckless. My best friend Connie said she’d have done the same thing in a heartbeat.
But here’s what nobody’s talking about. What Brody said in that room. What he disclosed. I got the transcript from the prosecutor’s office this morning, and when I read the first page –
What Was On That Page
I had to put it down.
Not because it was hard to read, though it was. I’ve read a lot of these transcripts over six years. I know how to hold myself together through the clinical language, the timestamps, the way the forensic interviewer asks the same question four different ways to make sure the answer is consistent. I know how to read those pages like a professional.
I put it down because of how it started.
The forensic interviewer, a woman named Karen Bissell who’s been doing this for twenty years, asked Brody if he could tell her why he came in today. Standard opener. Gets the child talking, establishes that they understand the purpose of the conversation.
Brody said: “Because Wrench said the truth is what makes the bad guys not win.”
Karen wrote in her margin notes that he was sitting up straight. That he made eye contact. That he had his hands folded on the table like a little adult who’d decided something.
I sat in my car in the parking lot of my office building and read that line three times.
Then I read the rest of it.
What Brody Said
I’m not going to put details here. I won’t do that to him.
What I will say is that the statement was specific, consistent, and corroborated two things the investigator already suspected but couldn’t confirm. The prosecutor’s office flagged it within hours. By yesterday afternoon, the foster father had been formally charged.
Forty-seven minutes. A kid who’d spent three sessions with me staring at the floor, picking at a loose thread on his hoodie cuff, giving me nothing but the sound of his own breathing.
The difference wasn’t me. I want to be clear about that. I’d prepared him as well as I could. I’d done everything right procedurally, every session. I’d used the right language, the right techniques, the right amount of patience. And he still couldn’t do it.
The difference was twelve people in leather jackets sitting in plastic chairs.
The difference was Wrench, fifty-three years old, gray beard, hands that looked like he’d spent thirty years under car hoods, getting down on one knee in a sheriff’s station lobby and telling a seven-year-old boy he wasn’t going anywhere.
I keep thinking about that image. A guy who probably gets followed around hardware stores. Who probably watches people grip their purses tighter when he walks by. Kneeling on a linoleum floor for a kid nobody else could reach.
The Complaint
Here’s what the formal complaint actually says.
It says I “coordinated the presence of an outside organization at an active law enforcement facility without prior approval from the investigating detective or station command.” It says this created “an environment inconsistent with standard forensic interview protocol.” It says I may have “inadvertently influenced the psychological state of the minor witness in ways that could be challenged in court.”
That last one is the one my brother keeps quoting at me. He’s a lawyer. Not a criminal lawyer, he does commercial real estate, but he has opinions.
He called me Sunday night. He said, “Rach, I get why you did it. I do. But if the defense gets a forensic psychologist to argue that Brody’s statement was made under the psychological influence of an intimidating external support group, you could be handing them an out.”
I said, “The lobby of a public building.”
He said, “Doesn’t matter. The perception is what they’ll argue.”
I said, “He talked for forty-seven minutes, Mark.”
He said, “I know.”
Long pause.
“I know,” he said again, quieter.
The thing is, he’s not wrong that there’s a risk. I’m not going to pretend there isn’t. Defense attorneys are creative and the system has gaps you could drive a truck through. I know that. Six years of this work and I know that better than almost anyone.
But here’s what I keep coming back to.
What was the alternative?
What the Alternative Looked Like
I’d watched Brody shut down three times.
The first session, he was at his temporary placement, a perfectly fine home with a woman named Diane who made him a snack he didn’t eat. He sat across from me at her kitchen table. I introduced myself, explained who I was and what I was there for, told him he wasn’t in trouble, told him nobody was angry at him. He pulled his hoodie strings until the hood cinched down around his face like a drawstring bag. He sat like that for forty minutes. I talked to the hood.
Second session, same placement. He came in already hooded. Sat down. I tried a different approach, more indirect, talking about school, his interests. He said two words the whole time. “Minecraft” and “okay.” That was it.
Third session, I brought a feelings chart. Colorful little cartoon faces. I spread it on the table and asked him to point to how he was feeling. He pointed to the one labeled “confused.” Then he pulled the chart toward him, turned it over so the faces were face-down on the table, and put both his hands flat on top of it.
He was protecting those cartoon faces from whatever he thought was coming.
I drove home from that third session and sat in my driveway for twenty minutes.
There’s a version of this story where I file my notes, flag my concerns, and let the process run its course. Where I trust that the system has enough redundancy to get a traumatized seven-year-old through a forensic interview eventually. Where I don’t make any calls that could come back on me professionally.
That version exists. I know it exists. And in that version, maybe the interview happens again in a month, or two months, and maybe by then Brody’s a little more stable, and maybe it goes okay.
Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the case stalls. Maybe the charges don’t stick because the statement never comes, or comes too late, or comes from a kid who’s been in the system long enough that he’s learned that talking doesn’t actually change anything.
I’ve seen that version too.
What Wrench Said to Me After
When Brody came out of the interview room, he walked straight across the lobby to Wrench.
Wrench was standing up by then. He’d been standing for the last twenty minutes, I found out later, because one of the other members, a woman they call “Doc,” had told him Brody would want to see him standing. Ready. Not sitting and waiting. Standing.
Brody walked up to him and Wrench put one hand on top of his head, just rested it there, and said, “You did good, Turbo.”
Brody didn’t say anything. He just leaned into Wrench’s side and stood there.
I was watching from across the lobby and Detective Morales was watching from the hallway and I don’t know what Morales was thinking but I was thinking: this is what it’s supposed to look like. This is what we’re all supposed to be doing. Whatever combination of people and luck and timing got us to this lobby, this is the point of all of it.
Wrench caught my eye over Brody’s head.
He said, “You need anything else from us, you call.”
That was it. They left. All twelve of them. Quiet, orderly, out through the front doors into the parking lot.
I heard later from Diane that Brody ate dinner that night. Full plate. Asked for seconds.
Where Things Stand
My supervisor, a woman named Pat who I genuinely respect, is meeting with the CASA program director next week. The complaint has to go through a formal review. I’ll have to write a response explaining my decision-making and the steps I took.
I’ve started drafting it four times.
Every time, I get to the part where I’m supposed to explain what I should have done differently, and I stop.
Because I’ve thought about it. I’ve really thought about it. Not defensively, not to protect myself, but actually sat with the question: was there a better path?
Maybe I should have called Morales first. Probably. That’s fair. A heads-up, at minimum. I didn’t, because I was afraid he’d say no, and I was afraid he’d be right to say no by the rulebook, and I was afraid the rulebook would win over Brody. That fear was probably correct and also probably not a good enough reason to skip the call.
I’ll own that part.
But the decision itself, to ask BACA to be there? To make sure that kid walked into a sheriff’s station and saw twelve people who had told him they’d always show up?
I keep reading that line from the transcript.
Because Wrench said the truth is what makes the bad guys not win.
A seven-year-old walked into a room and told the truth for forty-seven minutes because a man with grease-stained hands knelt down and made him a promise.
I don’t know what the review board is going to decide about me. I don’t know if the complaint goes on my record or gets dismissed or turns into something bigger. I don’t know what the defense will do with the statement or whether it holds up or what Brody’s next year looks like.
What I know is what was on the first page of that transcript.
I know Brody sat up straight.
I know he folded his hands on the table.
I know he said Wrench’s name.
If you know someone who works with kids in the system, or who needs to hear that doing the right thing isn’t always the clean thing, send this to them.
For more stories about the unexpected impact of a little compassion, check out what happened when I Let Bikers Walk a Seven-Year-Old Into a Courthouse and Now I Might Lose My Job or when I Let Twelve Bikers Walk My Foster Kid Into Court and Now I’m Facing a Review Board. And you won’t want to miss the moment I Was in the Foster Home Driveway When Thirty Motorcycles Turned Onto the Street.
