Am I wrong for letting a group of bikers walk my seven-year-old into the courthouse when the detective told me it would “make things worse”?
My daughter Bree has to testify next month against someone in our family. I can’t say more than that. We’ve been in and out of the police station on Granger Ave since February, doing interviews, filling out paperwork, watching Bree talk to forensic specialists through a one-way mirror while I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled. She’s seven. She still sleeps with a stuffed rabbit named Biscuit.
Three weeks ago we were at the station for another round of prep with the DA’s office and Bree wouldn’t get out of the car. Not a tantrum. She just sat there shaking, her seatbelt still clicked, staring at the front doors. She said, “He’s going to be in there.” He wasn’t. But she didn’t believe me. She hasn’t believed me about anything safe since October.
My coworker Denise told me about this group – they’re called something like Bikers Against Child Abuse, a local chapter. Volunteers. Background-checked, trained, the whole thing. They show up in leather and patches and they stand next to the kid. That’s it. They don’t talk to lawyers. They don’t interfere. They just make the kid feel like nobody can touch them.
I called. A guy named Big Mike called me back within an hour. He asked me Bree’s favorite color, what she liked, what scared her. He listened for forty minutes.
Last Thursday, six of them met us in the parking lot. Bree grabbed Big Mike’s hand and WALKED INTO THAT BUILDING like I haven’t seen her walk anywhere in five months. No shaking. No freezing. She looked up at him and said, “Are you all here for me?” and he said, “Every single one of us, every single time.”
Detective Alderman pulled me aside in the lobby. He said having them there was “intimidating to other parties” and could “complicate the case.” He said the defense attorney would use it. He told me I needed to “think about the optics” and send them home.
I said no.
He got closer. Lowered his voice. Said, “Mrs. Pulaski, I’m trying to help your daughter. You’re making my job harder.”
My friends are split. My mom says I should listen to the detective because he knows the system. Denise says the detective is protecting the department, not Bree. My attorney hasn’t returned my call yet.
But here’s the thing nobody knows. When we got home that night, Bree said something to me at bedtime. She held Biscuit against her chest and looked at me and said –
What She Said
“Mama, can they come to court too?”
Not: are they allowed to. Not: do you think they will. She said can they, like it was up to me. Like I had that kind of power. Like I was someone who could arrange the world to be less terrible.
I told her yes.
I don’t know if that’s legally complicated. I don’t know if Detective Alderman is right about the defense attorney. What I know is that my daughter, who has not asked me for one single thing since October except to sleep with the light on, asked me for something. And it was six people in leather jackets standing next to her so she didn’t feel alone.
I said yes before I finished the thought.
What October Did to Her
I’m not going to say what happened. I’m not going to say who. I will say that before October, Bree was the kind of kid who walked into rooms like she owned them. Loud. Opinions about everything. She once argued with me for twenty minutes about whether clouds were alive. She decided they were. She named three of them.
After October she stopped talking in the car. That was the first thing I noticed. She’d always narrated everything from the backseat, every sign, every dog, every interesting truck. Then one day: nothing. I kept waiting for her to start up again.
She didn’t.
By November she was wetting the bed. By December she’d stopped eating anything except plain rice and buttered toast. Her pediatrician referred us to a trauma specialist named Dr. Voss, who has a office full of sand trays and told me in a very calm voice that what Bree was showing was textbook. That word. Textbook. I sat in the parking lot for fifteen minutes after that appointment. Textbook.
The forensic interview was January 14th. I know the date because I wrote it in my planner and then couldn’t look at my planner for a week after. They were gentle with her. Everyone was gentle. Bree sat in a small chair in a small room and answered questions in a voice I didn’t recognize and I watched through glass and pressed my thumb into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.
She did everything right. She told the truth. She was seven years old and she did everything right and she still had to come back four more times.
Big Mike
I want to tell you about the phone call, because I almost didn’t make it.
Denise had mentioned the group twice before and I’d nodded and not written anything down. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought it was the kind of thing that worked for other people. Maybe I thought accepting help was admitting how bad it had gotten. Maybe I just didn’t have the bandwidth to make one more phone call to one more stranger who might or might not understand.
The third time Denise mentioned them she slid a handwritten phone number across my desk and said, “Just call. You don’t have to do anything after that.”
Big Mike answered on the second ring. His voice was the kind of voice that sounds like it’s been outside a lot. Not rough. Just weathered. He said his name and the chapter name and then he said, “Tell me about your kid.”
I wasn’t ready for that. I’d prepared to explain the situation, the case, the logistics. I hadn’t prepared to talk about Bree specifically. I started crying about forty-five seconds in and he just waited. Didn’t rush me. Didn’t say I’m so sorry in that way people do when they want you to stop. He just waited until I could talk again and then he asked what her favorite color was.
Purple. It’s been purple since she was four.
He asked what she was scared of besides the obvious. I said loud noises. Sudden movements. Men she doesn’t know.
He was quiet for a second. Then he said, “We’ll introduce ourselves in the parking lot, slow, with space. She picks who stands closest. She can change her mind. She sets the pace.”
I asked him why they did it.
He said, “Because the system isn’t built for kids. It’s built for cases. Somebody’s got to be there for the kid.”
I didn’t say anything. He didn’t make me.
The Parking Lot
Last Thursday was cold. One of those March mornings where the sky can’t decide and everything is the color of old concrete. We pulled into the lot at Granger Ave at 8:40 and they were already there. Six of them. Standing in a loose group near the entrance, not blocking anything, not performing anything. Just there.
Their bikes weren’t there. I found out later they’d driven cars. Didn’t want the noise to startle her.
I parked and Bree looked out the window. She didn’t say anything. I watched her face.
Big Mike is a large man. Six-two, maybe more, built like a retired lineman, beard going gray at the edges. He was wearing a vest with patches and underneath it a purple hoodie. I don’t know if that was on purpose. I think it was on purpose.
He walked to about ten feet from the car and stopped. Crouched down so he was at Bree’s window level. Waited.
Bree stared at him for a long moment. Then she unclicked her seatbelt.
She got out of the car and walked up to him and said, “Your hoodie is purple.”
He looked down at it like he was just noticing. “It is,” he said. “Good color.”
She looked at the others. One of them, a woman named Charlene with a gray braid and a patch that said something I couldn’t read from where I stood, gave Bree a small nod. Not a wave. Not a big smile. Just a nod, like they were equals.
Bree reached up and took Big Mike’s hand.
She walked into that building. Head up. Shoulders back. Like she was walking in with her whole army, which I guess she was.
What Alderman Said
Detective Alderman has been the lead on our case since November. He’s competent. He’s not unkind. He’s also the kind of man who has been doing this job long enough that he thinks about everything in terms of how it plays.
He caught me near the water fountain, just inside the lobby. Bree was with Big Mike and Charlene about twenty feet away, sitting in a row of chairs, Charlene showing her something on a small piece of paper. Drawing something, maybe.
Alderman spoke quietly. He said the defense would argue that the bikers were there to intimidate witnesses or influence the environment. He said the judge might not like it. He said “optics” twice.
I listened. I actually listened, because I’m not someone who dismisses things just because they’re inconvenient.
Then he said, “Send them home, and we’ll get through this the right way.”
I looked over at Bree. She was laughing at whatever Charlene had drawn. I hadn’t heard her laugh in I don’t know how long. Weeks. The sound of it did something to my chest.
I looked back at Alderman. I said, “No.”
He stepped closer. The voice dropped. “Mrs. Pulaski.” Like my name was a warning.
I said, “She is seven years old and she is laughing right now and your case will be fine. She needs to be okay first.”
He didn’t say anything else. He walked away. I don’t know if he was angry. I don’t know what he did with it. I stood by the water fountain for a minute and then I went and sat next to my daughter.
What I Don’t Know
I don’t know if Alderman is right about the legal stuff. My attorney, a woman named Pam Greer who I have been trying to reach since Friday, has not called me back. It’s possible there are things I don’t understand about how this could affect the case. I’m not a lawyer. I’m a woman who works in accounts payable and has been holding her family together with her bare hands since October.
What I know is this.
BACA – Bikers Against Child Abuse – is a real, established organization. They’ve been doing this since 1995. They’ve testified before state legislatures. They have protocols. They coordinate with law enforcement in most jurisdictions. They are not a gang. They are not a stunt. They are volunteers who decided the most useful thing they could do with their weekends was stand next to scared kids.
I also know that the defense attorney is going to try to make Bree’s pain look like a performance. That’s his job. He is going to look for every angle. And I sat there and thought: okay. Let him argue that a purple hoodie and a woman who draws funny pictures is intimidating. Let him say that in front of a jury.
Because you know what’s actually intimidating? Being seven and having to walk into a building and tell a room full of adults what someone did to you.
That’s intimidating. Six people who showed up in a parking lot on a cold Thursday because they made a promise to a kid they’d never met – that’s the opposite.
The Night After
We got home at 2pm. Bree ate half a grilled cheese, which is more than she’d eaten at one sitting in two weeks. She watched TV for a while. Around 7:30 she started to fade.
I got her into bed. She pulled Biscuit up under her chin the way she does, the rabbit’s ear folded the same way it always is. The night-light was on. It’s a little moon. It’s been there since she was three.
She looked at me and said, “Mama, can they come to court too?”
I said yes.
She thought about that. Then she said, “Big Mike is really tall.”
“He is.”
“I think nobody would bother you if he was standing next to you.”
“I think you’re right.”
She was asleep in four minutes. I sat on the edge of her bed for a while longer. Long enough that my legs went stiff. I watched her breathe.
I’m not wrong. I know I’m not wrong. But I’m writing this at 11pm because I’m still awake and my attorney still hasn’t called and next month is coming whether I’m ready or not. Bree is going to walk into a courthouse and tell the truth and I am going to make sure she does not do it alone.
Big Mike has already confirmed they’ll be there.
Every single one of them. Every single time.
—
If this one stayed with you, pass it on. There are other parents up at 11pm who need to know this is an option.
If you’re looking for more wild stories, check out how my sergeant tried to run off the only people protecting a seven-year-old witness or what happened when the fair manager told my 7-year-old she needed thicker skin. And for another dose of unexpected encounters, read about when I told him to stay still, and he said, “I know. That’s why I moved here.”.
