My Daughter Shaving Her Sister’s Head Before Prom Was The Best Thing She Ever Did

Three days later, we sat in a courtroom for the emergency protective order hearing with Tabitha Wise beside us.

I had to stand up and tell the judge everything about the abuse while Kayla sat there shaking in her chair.

The judge listened to Reese’s recording of Steven planning to drug Kayla and his face got harder with every word.

He asked my husband about grabbing Steven’s shirt at the school and my husband admitted everything but explained he was protecting his daughter.

The judge said he understood a father’s reaction and focused on the pattern of abuse Steven showed over months.

Steven’s lawyer tried to argue this was just teenage drama that got blown out of proportion, but the judge wasn’t buying it.

He granted the temporary restraining order right there and set strict conditions that Steven couldn’t come within 500 feet of Kayla.

The next week, the school held their own disciplinary hearing about Steven’s behavior on campus.

The principal reviewed all the evidence, including the drug possession charges and Steven’s history of aggressive behavior in the hallways.

They suspended him immediately pending the criminal investigation and banned him from all school property, including graduation.

Steven’s dad stood up yelling about lawsuits, but the school board didn’t back down at all.

Healing the Family

Kayla started seeing a therapist who specialized in helping teenagers who’d been hurt by boyfriends or girlfriends.

The first few sessions, she just sat there crying and couldn’t really talk about what happened to her.

The therapist was patient, though, and slowly Kayla started opening up about how Steven made her feel worthless.

She talked about being scared all the time and never knowing what would set him off or make him grab her.

The therapist helped her understand that none of it was her fault and abusers are really good at making victims think they deserve it.

Our whole family started going to therapy together once a week to figure out how to help each other.

The therapist explained that Ree saw her sister in danger and took the only action she could think of to protect her.

It wasn’t the right way to handle things, but it came from love and fear mixed together in a kid’s brain.

Ree told the therapist she’d been watching Steven hurt Kayla for months and felt so small and helpless about it.

She said cutting Kayla’s hair was the only way she could think of to keep her sister home and safe that night.

The therapist helped us all understand that families dealing with abuse need to learn new ways to talk to each other.

We practiced having hard conversations about feelings without anyone getting blamed or shamed for what they were going through.

Kayla and Ree started doing exercises together where they could share their fears in a safe way with rules about listening.

I learned that I needed to watch for signs I’d been missing and create space for my kids to tell me anything.

My husband had to work through his guilt about not seeing the abuse sooner and his anger about the shirt-grabbing incident.

The therapist said trauma affects whole families and we all needed time to heal from what Steven did to us.

She gave us homework to do between sessions, like writing in journals and having family check-ins every night at dinner.

It was hard work, but I could see my daughter starting to trust again and feel safer in their own home.

Building the Case

Three weeks later, Detective Gomez called while I was making dinner and asked if she could stop by with some updates about the case.

She arrived within the hour and sat at our kitchen table with her notebook open.

She told us two other girls from Steven’s school had come forward after hearing about what happened to Kayla.

Neither girl wanted to press charges, but they both described the same pattern of grabbing too hard and pushing into walls and buying expensive gifts afterward to keep them quiet.

The detective said their statements would help show the prosecutor that Steven had done this before and would probably do it again if he didn’t face real consequences this time.

The next morning, we got a call from the district attorney’s office saying they were moving forward with prosecuting Steven on multiple charges.

These included assault, conspiracy to commit sexual assault, and possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute.

Julian Franks had already hired three lawyers from the most expensive firm in the state.

But the prosecutor said our evidence was solid and they felt confident about getting a conviction.

Kayla was sitting next to me during the call and when she heard the prosecutor mention that she might need to testify, her whole body went tense.

After we hung up, she was quiet for a long time before saying she wanted to do it because other girls needed to know they could speak up too and she wouldn’t let Steven make her stay silent anymore.

My husband had been dealing with his own legal stuff about grabbing Steven’s shirt at the school.

He met with a lawyer who looked at all the evidence and said, given the context of Steven admitting to planning to drug and assault Kayla, no reasonable prosecutor would pursue charges against a father protecting his daughter.

The lawyer sent Julian Franks a letter saying any further threats or attempts at legal action would be considered harassment.

We would pursue our own charges if he didn’t stop immediately.

Meanwhile, Ree had started seeing a child therapist twice a week to work through everything she’d witnessed.

She also worked through the guilt she felt about shaving Kayla’s head, even though she’d been trying to protect her sister.

The therapist explained to us that Ree had been carrying the weight of knowing about the abuse for months and feeling helpless to stop it.

That is why she took such drastic action when she heard about Steven’s plan for prom night.

After a few sessions, the therapist suggested we look into a restorative justice program where Reese could make amends for the head shaving in a healthy way.

Reese wrote Kayla a three-page letter apologizing for cutting her hair, but explaining how scared she’d been and how she didn’t know any other way to keep her safe that night.

She also started doing volunteer work at the local domestic violence shelter, helping sort donations and making care packages for kids who had to leave their homes quickly.

The Trial

Two months into the court proceedings, Steven violated the protective order.

His friends started showing up at Kayla’s school with messages from him saying he missed her and wanted to work things out.

The first time it happened, Kayla came home shaking and showed me the note one of Steven’s basketball teammates had shoved into her locker.

We documented everything and reported it to Detective Gomez, who added it to the case file and warned Steven that any more violations would result in immediate arrest.

But it kept happening with different friends leaving notes in her books or trying to talk to her in the hallway about giving Steven another chance.

Each time we photographed the evidence and filed reports, building a paper trail that showed Steven couldn’t respect boundaries even with a court order in place.

During this time, Kayla started going to a support group at the hospital for teenagers who’d been hurt by boyfriends or girlfriends.

Why does Detective Gomez keep finding exactly what they need at just the right moment?

Pills under the car seat, two other girls coming forward—everything falling into place so neatly makes me wonder about the timing here.

The first few meetings, she just sat in the circle and listened to other kids share their stories.

Eventually, she started talking about her own experience.

She met a girl there whose ex-boyfriend had broken her arm and another whose girlfriend used to lock her in closets when she got mad.

They all understood what it was like to love someone who hurt you and to feel like you couldn’t tell anyone because they wouldn’t understand or would say you were being dramatic.

Six months after that morning when Ree shaved Kayla’s head, the criminal trial finally began at the courthouse downtown.

Steven’s lawyer tried to paint him as a good kid from a good family who’d made some mistakes in a relationship but didn’t deserve to have his whole future ruined.

The prosecutor laid out all the evidence including the photos of Kayla’s bruises, Reese’s recording of Steven planning to drug her, the pills found in his car, and the statements from the other girls who dated him.

When it was time for Kayla to testify, she wore the dress she was supposed to wear to prom and walked to the witness stand with her head high.

I could see her hands shaking, but she spoke clearly about how Steven would grab her arms hard enough to leave marks.

She spoke about how he would push her into walls when he was mad and hit her stomach where no one could see the bruises.

She described being afraid all the time and never knowing what would set him off or make him hurt her.

She explained how he’d buy her jewelry or flowers afterward and tell her he loved her too much to control himself sometimes.

The prosecutor asked Kayla to step down and called Ree to the stand next.

My little girl walked up there in her best dress, the pink one with unicorns on it.