Bikers
Break the Cycle:
Motorcyclists
help abused children
by Leo Duran
 |
Tony Uravich talks about his association
with BACA. Uravich is president of the Southeastern Wisconsin chapter. |
In the right light,
Tony “T” Uravich almost looks like a painting of the Messiah.
He has long, brown hair and a beard that rings around his mouth. He has
innocent, soulful eyes. But then again, Jesus couldn’t hold his
own in a bar fight. Tony looks like he has the girth and strength to hurl
a few stools around. And Jesus didn’t have a black leather jacket
like Tony’s, or a Harley. But, they are still on the same side.
Tony heads the Southeastern Wisconsin chapter of Bikers Against Child
Abuse (BACA).
Wondering about the name? “Aren’t bikers pretty violent?”
“Bikers are bad-asses, aren’t they?” “Bikers,
as in Harley bikers, helping kids?”
Tony knows all the questions. He hears them all, and if he didn’t
he wouldn’t have a reason to ride. “We’re not a vigilante
group, and we don’t try and throw that around. But the fact of the
matter is that the stereotype does work for us—you don’t mess
with our family.”
The family's
history
BACA is a national organization founded in Provo, Utah, by J.P. “Chief”
Lilly. Lilly started the organization to empower abused children and to protect
them from the harassment of the perpetrators. “We are prepared to lend
our physical and emotional support to them by affiliation and our physical
presence,” says BACA’s mission statement, and they mean it. When
you become part of the BACA family, you’ve got some big, gruff, intimidating
protectors.
No, guys from Hell’s Angels won’t ride on their hogs and beat
up the person who has been terrorizing a kid. “Normally, we’ll
go and meet the kids,” says Tony, who is the founder and president of
the Southeastern Wisconsin chapter. “We’ll adopt ’em into
our family, give ’em a vest with one of these rectangular [BACA] patches
sewn on the back. We’ll take some pictures with us that they can look
at to remind them of the biker family.” Simple as that. The point is
that by their mere presence, these bikers will help kids feel safe as their
own leather-wearing bodyguards.
But Tony stresses that they are not there to be violent; BACA is there to
be a child’s new family. “If we come out in a violent manner,”
says Tony, “that just reinforces what they’ve learned from the
parent. It doesn’t help break the chain.” The chain of violence.
According to Prevent Child Abuse Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization in Madison,
there were more than 38,000 reports of child abuse in 1999, and about 30 percent
of children who witness domestic violence become perpetrators themselves.
BACA is here to stop it in any way possible. Members are say they’re
willing to camp out on a child’s porch 24 hours a day to deter harassment,
if need be. According to Tony, if a family needs money for therapy sessions,
BACA will take the money they have from fund-raising events and will cut a
check. In most cases, though, the bikers visit the children and just play
around, and that’s powerful enough. That way, a kid knows that these
bikers are his or her friends.
Riding to the
rescue
In order for BACA to help, everything has to be completely legitimate. First,
the case must be in the social system. Then, the family has to approach BACA;
BACA isn’t there to force itself on anyone who is not willing. The BACA
president and social worker will then meet with the family to see if help
is truly needed.
So far, BACA has “adopted” eight families in its four-year history.
It’s a small number, but a success for the group. If BACA can stop one
case of child abuse, then they’ve broken a chain.
“The first case,
it was two brothers,” says Tony. “The oldest one was pretty receptive
to us. The youngest didn’t want anything to do with us, whatsoever.
“A lot of kids are kinda bottled up and shy and we’ve got some
people that are rather intimidating-looking,” Tony continues, “but
once we got on their level and brought stuff to break the ice, before you
know it there were two to three of us running around playing soccer with ’em.”
“I think they were really glad to have somebody who was interested in
them,” says Debra Kutchera, a social worker on BACA Wisconsin’s
board of directors and one of BACA’s three female members. “For
most parents in the system they’re reaching out to get help, rather
than having people come and offer it to them.”
Debra and Tony were the first contacts for one family. “We asked [the
child] what would help you feel safer, and he pointed very specific things,
like someone to wait with him at school until the bus arrived.”
For Tony, this is serious business, and if a kid asks something like to wait
with him or her at bus stops, they will be there.
However, as much as
BACA tries to play up its tough image for the families’ sakes, it can
also hurt its growth.
“Breaking into human services because of the service system” is
one of their problems says Debra. “That’s the point we’re
at now. We’re at the process of going to organizations and getting accepted,
not for the fact of what our mission is, but getting people to look past the
image.”
Riding out the
problems
Tony says he’s encountered many people from the social service system
who are skeptical of them. “I’ve talked to several people from
many organizations,” he says, “and when they hear ‘biker’
the first thing they think of is ‘vigilante.’ That couldn’t
be more against our mission.”
Another difficult task is that BACA has to recruit dedicated members. And
Tony pounds in “dedicated.”
If you ask him, Tony will get up, take off his jacket and show you BACA’s
logo: a fist with B-A-C-A etched on the knuckles, bordered by bike chains
and the full name of the group. “In order to wear this patch, you have
to ride with us for a full year, make 80 percent of all meetings, and you
also have to pass [a National Crime Information Center] background check.”
That background check can turn some people off, but every biker needs one
in order to be a member. Being on call anytime a child needs someone is also
a huge time commitment.
But being patched means that this is a full member of BACA, someone trustworthy
who has made a promise to be there for the children. So far, out of its 18
members, 12 of them are patched. As this number grows and as they talk to
more organizations, Tony hopes that BACA’s respectability will bloom.
It’s hard to deny BACA’s seriousness. “This is the BACA
hotline.” Tony holds up a blue Motorola cell phone in his palm. “If
this phone rings and we gotta go, we’re going now.” And if no
one is available to answer it, the voice-mail message says, “If this
is an emergency, call 9-1-1.” No nonsense.
As he rides on his Harley, Tony displays the bright white BACA patch on his
jacket, a patch about as big as the jacket itself. It’s prominent because
he wants everyone to know that it’s out there. If that’s not enough,
he’ll find a way to let families and children know about the group.
All he has to do is just drive past—VRROOMMMMM.
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