They Wear Leather, Ride Motorcycles. And Protect Children From Abusers.

A nonprofit on Staten Island offers a nontraditional, “ride-or-die” sphere of protection for vulnerable youth.

The headquarters for the Staten Island chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse has eight American flags, two portraits of Christopher Columbus and a stack of laminated Virgin Mary wallet inserts. Earlier this summer, a teary-eyed Billyjoe Contreras led a meeting there.

“Look at this email I just got,” he announced to the group. “It’s from a single mom of two kids who were sexually abused.”

Rows of people with leather vests, snug bandannas, tattooed arms and tomato-red sunburns watched Mr. Contreras, whose road name is Demo, in silence. “Be ready,” he said. “Because this is what we signed up to do.”

The nonprofit, known for its unique approach — its motorcycle-riding volunteers work in large, menacing numbers to protect at-risk children — was founded nearly 30 years ago in Provo, Utah. There are currently over 220 chapters across the United States, led by bikers with road names like Toad, Shredder and Mr. Clean. The group also has a presence in 18 countries. Members respond to emergency calls, raise funds for therapy sessions and escort vulnerable children to court.

Mr. Contreras is the president of the Staten Island group, which is based in the neighborhood of New Dorp and supports a roster of about 20 young people from ages 2 to 18. He is a Brooklyn native and joined Bikers Against Child Abuse in 2016 after considering a few motorcycle club offers.

But this one’s mission spoke to him.

When he was 4, his father walked out, leaving his mother and her seven children to fend for themselves in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, he said. He remembers the city’s child protective services showing up at their basement apartment at 2 a.m. to check everyone for bruises after receiving a call from a concerned neighbor. He also remembers hiding behind a stove while his mother’s boyfriend hit her. Years after that, he was sexually abused at his local church, he said.

In recent years, Staten Island’s North Shore has had one of the highest child mistreatment rates in New York City, with 25 victims of abuse or neglect per 1,000 children in 2019, nearly three times the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, of the children living in poverty on the North Shore, 40 percent were involved with investigations of abuse or neglect in 2019.

When legal guardians call the Bikers hotline to report a child in danger, they trigger a highly coordinated response effort. (According to Biker bylaws, members are not allowed to help a family unless a case has been filed with the child welfare agency.) The bikers begin by meeting with the family and assigning them two primary contacts, who Mr. Contreras said are available “25 hours a day.” Should families commit to receiving help, children are given a “custom cut,” or biker vest, stitched with their own road names during a small ceremony, welcoming them into the bikers’ ride-or-die sphere of protection.

Members of the Staten Island Bikers — a mix of teachers, engineers, radio hosts and even police officers — go through an arduous vetting process. This includes F.B.I. fingerprint searches commonly used by the Army, 12 months of training and three months of observation. (And yes, members must own a motorcycle.)

The group raises money in ways you’d expect, such as through coin jars outside grocery stores, and in ways you wouldn’t, like fund-raisers with male strippers. Its annual budget of a few thousand dollars goes to its phone bill and resources for the children, like therapy sessions or cheerleading camp.

Every member has a role: Demo (Mr. Contreras), as the president, enforces international bylaws; Shortcut, the vice president and road captain, runs daily operations and an annual 100-mile training ride; Quikfix, the secretary, takes notes and checks attendance; DJ, the treasurer, handles the money; and Diesel, the sergeant-at-arms, trains the Biker’s security team. He drives a truck plastered with bumper stickers. One reads “LGBT: liberty, guns, beer, Trump.”

(While Staten Island residents overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections, and some of the Bikers reflect those allegiances, liberal or conservative beliefs do not affect membership. “We don’t become political,” Mr. Contreras said.)

As part of the training, Diesel, the security guy, surprises new members with a call at midnight to show up for an “emergency,” only to send them home as a test of their commitment. Members who fail to show up are kicked off the squad.

Because, of course, there are real emergencies. Emmi, 17, a typical-looking teenager with ripped jeans and statement nails — and whose mother requested her last name be withheld for security reasons — knows all about them. Five years ago, her parents had an altercation, resulting in her father shooting a gun through her mother’s apartment window, she recalled. The mother, who said she was hesitant to call the police because the father was in a gang and she feared repercussions, called the Bikers.

Mr. Contreras immediately showed up and didn’t leave Emmi’s front door until 2 a.m., seven hours after he’d arrived, when another member took his place, he said. For days, a total of four bikers, some of whom rolled in from as far away as Maine and North Carolina, surrounded Emmi’s home 24/7: One guarded the front door, another patrolled the alleyway and two more lined the yard. Occasionally, they would be armed. (Two bikers are officers employed by the state and are authorized to carry weapons off duty, though they have never resorted to using them, Mr. Contreras said.)

During this time, Mr. Contreras said he grew increasingly worried about the father’s gang. So he set up a meeting with its leader through a childhood friend. “They told me to come alone,” he said. During the meeting, the two leaders agreed that the Bikers would protect Emmi and her siblings without interference from the gang, which would keep the father in check.

One week later, the father was arrested, two blocks away.

“They helped us a lot,” Emmi said of the Bikers. “They were there to protect us.”

Almost one year after the gun incident, Emmi, then 13, was raped by a 58-year-old family friend, she said. Once again, the Bikers were summoned. They ended up accompanying Emmi to the Special Victims Unit and eventually to criminal court. When her rapist walked into the courtroom, Emmi ran into the hallway; it was Mr. Contreras who encouraged her to continue the testimony, she said.

Whether Bikers Against Child Abuse is supported by the state or a clique of scruffy vigilantes can depend on where you live. In some states like Arkansas, the organization has been endorsed by prosecuting attorneys and state representatives. In 2005, Laura Bush invited the organization’s founder to the White House as part of a youth initiative. But New York City hasn’t been as welcoming. “Big cities have the hardest time working with us,” Mr. Contreras said. “I think some agencies want to be sure that we’re not a fly-by-night organization.”

That seems to be the concern of Joyce McMillan, the executive director of JMac for Families, a child welfare nonprofit in New York. “None of it makes sense to me,” she said. “They’re intimidating without having full knowledge of what’s happening within the household but just going off the word of a person, then creating a ruckus outside of their home.”

In New York, Mr. Contreras has been invited to district attorney’s offices and child protective agencies to discuss what the Bikers do. “In our experience, they have been a positive, visible and energetic force both in the community and in the courtroom in support of children on Staten Island impacted by abuse,” said Michael McMahon, the Richmond County district attorney. “We welcome their continued work in the years ahead.”

But Mr. Contreras has had little success in persuading organizations to refer families to his crew. Years ago, the Administration for Children’s Services referred two families to him.

But a spokeswoman for the agency said that it was not currently referring cases to the Bikers. She did not give a reason but explained that its specialists do a number of things to assess the safety of children before requesting an order of protection, including interviewing and observing all the children, parents and family members in the home, as well as speaking with neighbors, teachers and doctors. Investigations can last up to 60 days.

“At the end of the day, none of these people are trained, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t provide an additional support system,” said Robert Schechter, a lawyer who has worked on abuse cases. However, he is concerned that if the Bikers intervene too early, without knowing all the facts, people could be falsely accused.

And the group, despite its vetting processes, has had some bad apples as members. In 2009, a member of the Houston chapter was charged with possession of child pornography. Eight years later, a husband and wife in another Texas chapter, Round Rock, were charged with multiple counts of abuse, including indecency with a child, in a case involving their foster children.

But Mr. Contreras still believes in the mission. “Nine,” he said to a reporter in December, while they sat in a pub, listening to the country song “Freedom Was a Highway.”

He then explained himself: Over the past three years, he had told nine people of the abuse he experienced at the church, by a priest, which took place when he was 9.

He was 38 when the memories, which he’d repressed for almost three decades, came flooding back. In 2019, he happened to see a commercial, calling out for new cases in response to New York’s Child Victims Act, which opened a two-year window for most survivors to sue over the sexual abuse they suffered as children.

In the following days, Mr. Contreras felt his whole body itch, as he realized he could no longer stay quiet, he said. He told his wife, pulled his daughter out of church and started the process of putting together a lawsuit, which is still pending.

His work with Bikers, he said, is both therapeutic for him and done out of a grave concern for other young people. “I don’t want a kid to have to go through what I went through and hide that for 30 years,” he said.

On his way out of the bar, a stranger shook Mr. Contreras’s hand, thanking him for his work. Mr. Contreras nodded shyly, then shuffled outside toward his pickup truck.

Article Credits: The New York Times