Tell me if I’m wrong – I let twelve bikers in leather vests walk my foster child into a courthouse and now I’m being told I could lose my certification.

I’ve been a court-appointed special advocate for six years. I’ve worked with thirty-one kids. I have NEVER had a case like Dominic’s. He’s seven. He’s supposed to testify against someone who should’ve protected him, and for the last two weeks he’s been waking up screaming because he knows that person will be in the same room.

His foster mom Trish called me last Tuesday at 6 AM, voice shaking. Dominic told her he’d rather run away than go to the courthouse. He meant it. She found his backpack by the back door stuffed with granola bars and a flashlight.

I tried everything the system gives you. I called the victim advocate coordinator. I asked about closed-circuit testimony. I requested a screen so Dominic wouldn’t have to see the defense table. Every single request got denied or delayed.

My cousin’s husband Gary rides with a group called Shields Up. They’re retired military, firefighters, mechanics – guys who volunteer specifically to support kids going through the court process. They’ve done it in other counties. They stand around the child so the kid feels surrounded by people who are ONLY there for them.

I called Gary on Thursday. By Friday he had eleven other riders confirmed.

Monday morning they met us in the courthouse parking lot. Twelve bikes lined up in a row. Dominic got out of Trish’s minivan and just stopped. One of the guys, a massive dude named Pete, kneeled down and said, “Hey buddy. We’re your team today. Nobody gets to you unless you say so.”

Dominic grabbed Pete’s hand and didn’t let go.

They walked him from the parking lot to the courthouse entrance. Dominic was calm. He was CALM. For the first time in weeks he wasn’t shaking.

Then my supervisor Diane saw them. She pulled me into a hallway and said, “What the hell is this? You brought a GANG to a child’s hearing?”

I told her they were volunteers. She said it didn’t matter. She said I had no authorization to arrange outside parties to accompany a minor in my care. She said I’d “created a spectacle” and that opposing counsel was already talking about filing a motion.

I said, “Diane, the kid was going to RUN. He packed a bag.”

She said, “That’s not your call. You’re an advocate, not a parent. You don’t get to make these decisions.”

My friends and family are split. Half of them think I did the only thing that would’ve gotten Dominic through that door. The other half say I overstepped and put my feelings above protocol and now I might’ve given the defense ammunition to delay the whole case.

The hearing got paused. Diane filed an incident report. I have a review meeting Thursday morning.

But here’s the thing nobody’s talking about. When we were in that hallway, Diane’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, and her whole face changed. She looked at me and said, “We need to talk about Dominic’s case file. There’s something in here that – “

And Then She Stopped

Her exact words.

“There’s something in here that -“

And then a clerk appeared at the end of the hallway needing Diane’s signature on something, and Diane held up one finger to me, went over there, signed whatever it was, and by the time she came back her face had reset. Professional. Flat. She said we’d talk Thursday and walked away.

I’ve been turning that half-sentence over in my head for three days.

Something in here that what? That changes things? That explains why every one of my accommodation requests got denied? That somebody should’ve caught six months ago?

I’ve read Dominic’s file so many times I could recite chunks of it. I know his placement history. I know the timeline. I know what the original intake notes say and I know what the updated ones say and I know they don’t quite match. I noticed that back in September and flagged it in my own notes and then got told by a different supervisor that discrepancies in early intake documentation were “common and not necessarily indicative of anything.”

I let it go.

I don’t know if I should have.

What the File Actually Says

I’m not going to put specifics here because it’s an active case and Dominic is a real child and I’m already in enough trouble.

But I’ll say this: there are two dates that don’t line up. A referral that came in from a mandatory reporter and a follow-up visit that’s logged as completed on the same day it was supposedly scheduled. Which, if you know how these things work, is not how these things work. You don’t schedule and complete a follow-up visit in the same morning. Not with a seven-year-old. Not with a case flagged at this level.

I pointed this out to Gary’s wife, Renee, who used to work in family services before she moved into school counseling. She went quiet when I read it to her over the phone.

“Send me the page numbers,” she said.

“I can’t send you the file, Renee.”

“I know. Just the page numbers. So I know what you’re looking at.”

I gave them to her. She said she’d call me back. That was yesterday afternoon. She hasn’t called yet.

Thursday Morning

The review meeting is at nine. Diane will be there. There’ll be someone from HR whose name I don’t know yet. My program director, Carl, who I’ve met twice and who communicates mostly through forwarded emails.

I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m walking into.

Because here’s the thing about losing your CASA certification: it doesn’t just mean you stop volunteering. It means the cases you’re currently on get transferred. It means Dominic gets a new advocate right now, weeks before his testimony, with no time to build anything. It means whatever thread of trust we’ve built over eight months gets handed to a stranger who’ll spend the first three sessions just trying to get him to make eye contact.

Dominic didn’t talk to me for the first six weeks. Not really. He’d answer yes or no. He’d shrug. He’d look at the floor and wait for me to leave. The thing that finally cracked it was a rubber band ball I keep in my car. Completely stupid. He asked what it was, I said it was a stress ball that didn’t work, and he laughed. One actual laugh. We built from there.

Eight months.

I’m not handing that to someone else four weeks before he has to get back on the stand.

What Pete Told Me

After the hallway thing with Diane, after the hearing got paused and everyone was standing around in that awful fluorescent limbo, I found Pete outside on the courthouse steps. He was eating a granola bar. I don’t know where he got it.

He’s a big guy. Retired Army, Gary told me. Works as a plumber now out in Caldwell County. He has a daughter who’s nine and a son who’s twelve and he started volunteering with Shields Up three years ago because, in his words, “somebody should’ve done it for a kid I grew up with and nobody did.”

He didn’t know the details of Dominic’s case. He never does, with any of the kids. That’s part of how Shields Up operates. The volunteers don’t get told why. They just show up.

“How’d he do?” I asked.

Pete thought about it. “He held my hand the whole way. Didn’t say much. But when we got to the door, right before we went in, he looked up and said, ‘Are you gonna wait?’” Pete paused. “I told him yeah. I told him we’d all be right here.”

I had to look away for a second.

“He okay?” Pete asked.

“He’s with Trish,” I said. “He’s okay.”

Pete nodded and finished his granola bar and didn’t say anything else about it. He asked me if there was parking validation in the building. I told him I didn’t think so. He said that figured.

The Split

My sister Carolyn thinks I made a mistake. She said it gently, which is somehow worse than if she’d just said it.

“You went outside the system,” she said. “And now you’re going to get punished for it. And Dominic’s case might get complicated because of it. I’m not saying you were wrong to care. I’m saying the way you did it might have cost him.”

She’s not wrong that it’s possible. I’ve thought about it every night since Monday. If opposing counsel uses the “spectacle” angle to file a continuance, if the case gets pushed, if Dominic has to wait another three months to testify, that’s on me.

But.

He packed granola bars and a flashlight.

He was going to run. And not the way seven-year-olds say they’re going to run. The way kids who’ve already learned that adults don’t come through say it. Quiet and matter-of-fact and without any expectation that someone would stop them.

I don’t know how to weigh those two things against each other. I’ve been trying.

My friend Donna, who teaches fourth grade and has never worked in child welfare a day in her life, said: “You got him in the door. Everything else is a problem for lawyers. Getting him in the door was your job.”

Donna is not a nuanced thinker. I love her for it.

What I’m Bringing Thursday

I’m bringing my documentation. Every request I filed. The dates I called the victim advocate coordinator. The email chain about closed-circuit testimony with the response that said “under review.” The screen request that came back as “not applicable to current case parameters,” which isn’t even a real reason, I don’t know what that means.

I’m bringing six years of case notes, thirty-one kids, and one incident that Diane has characterized as a spectacle.

I’m not bringing a lawyer because I can’t afford one and also because I don’t think I’m wrong.

I might be wrong about not being wrong. Carolyn would say so.

But I keep coming back to Diane’s face when her phone buzzed. The way she looked at me. Not angry. Something else. Closer to careful. Like she was deciding something.

There’s something in here that –

Renee still hasn’t called me back.

I’m going to walk into that meeting at nine o’clock Thursday morning and I genuinely do not know what’s waiting for me on the other side of that door. Could be a formal reprimand and a suspended certification. Could be Carl reading from a script and Diane not making eye contact. Could be something about that file. Could be all of it at once.

What I know is that Dominic woke up Tuesday morning without screaming.

Trish texted me. Said he ate breakfast. Said he asked if Pete was coming back sometime.

She said she didn’t know what to tell him.

I told her to say maybe. Because maybe is true and maybe is better than nothing and Dominic has had enough of nothing to last him a long time.

—

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If you’re looking for more stories about sticking to your convictions, check out The Judge Told Me to Move. I Didn’t. or read about what happened when My Principal Told Me to Pull the Job Offer. I Didn’t.. You might also appreciate this tale of standing up for a kid, even when He Shoved Me Into a Kid at a Gas Station. My Department Wants Answers..