by By J.C. Hallman, Oklahoma Watch
On the afternoon of Aug. 26, 2021, Ismail Safi brought his wife and six children to the Abbey Gate of Kabul International Airport. The Americans were leaving Afghanistan. Crowds of individuals who had worked for the Americans and their families lined up, despite threats of violence, to be screened for seats on a flight out of the country.
At approximately 5:50 p.m., as the family approached the gate, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device. That blast and another nearby killed 13 Americans and hundreds of Afghans; the bombings became a political cudgel and a violent symbol of the messy end of the longest war in American history.
Ismail Safi’s family was separated in the blast, said Ghulam Nabi Safi, Ismail Safi’s brother. Three of the children were initially missing. Two turned up quickly. But S.S., an 8-year-old girl, appeared to have vanished.
She remained missing for several days. Then her family received a call.
S.S. was on her way to Oklahoma.
What happened next — how a traumatized Afghan child ended up in the custody of an evangelical family she had never met, and how a new guardianship judge with a peculiar background handled the fight by her uncle and biological parents to bring her home — is a story that exposes structural weaknesses at the heart of Oklahoma’s guardianship system: sealed records, shortened hearings, conflicts of interest, and judges working without adequate training or oversight.
It is not a story unique to child guardianships. Multiple attorneys, former judges and national experts who spoke with Oklahoma Watch — some on the condition of anonymity — described systemic problems in both the adult and child guardianship systems in Oklahoma. In the former case, the crisis will grow acute as Oklahoma’s population ages.
Attorneys familiar with Oklahoma’s guardianship proceedings lamented a system beholden to money, resulting in a growing avalanche of pro se cases — that is, individuals who had no other choice but to represent themselves in court.
Harvey Brownstone, a jurist and author who served in the Ontario Court of Justice for 26 years, expressed surprise at Oklahoma’s closed system.
“The system was not designed to be navigated by people who didn’t go to law school,” Brownstone said. “Courts should be open. We can still protect the privacy of the people, without sealing files.”
A Child Unaccompanied
Ghulam Nabi Safi was in a secure location when the bombs went off, having worked as a translator for the U.S. government at the U.S. Embassy. His clearance got him onto a plane; he arrived in the United States on Sept. 1, 2021.
S.S.’s parents were sent to Pakistan. Although they had been cleared for visas, administrative delays had prevented them from being admitted to the United States. Meanwhile, eight-year-old S.S., dazed by the blast, made it through the airport gates on her own.
She found the family of distant cousins, Mohammed and Azizah Hashemi, Safi said. The Hashemis were able to use S.S.’s association with someone who had worked for the Americans to board a plane, Safi said. S.S. arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor.
Mohammed Hashemi, reached at a home in Oklahoma City, offered a different account. He said that Ghulam Nabi Safi had approached him at the airport and asked the Hashemis to keep S.S. for 15 days, until Safi could arrive in the U.S. and claim her.
The Hashemis were sponsored in Oklahoma by Jason Garner, an oil and gas executive who is also an elder of Memorial Road Church of Christ and chairman of the board of trustees of Oklahoma Christian Academy. In 2025, Garner joined the board of directors of the Oklahoma City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Patrick Raglow, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, recalled the shock of Oklahoma’s Afghan refugee crisis in September 2021. In the year prior to the fall of Kabul, Catholic Charities processed 26 total refugee arrivals. Then came a request from Gov. Kevin Stitt to assist 1,000 arrivals in Oklahoma City and 800 in Tulsa.
“Sometimes we got notice of 12 hours, sometimes it was two days,” Raglow said. “Sometimes it was after they arrived and the airport called and said, ‘Hey, who’s got this family?’”
Garner’s Memorial Road Church took on the largest number of Afghan families of any faith organization that partnered with Catholic Charities, according to a 2023 article in the Christian Chronicle, a publication for the worldwide Churches of Christ network. Raglow said he was aware that some partner organizations viewed the refugee influx as an opportunity.
“Some of them thought that this was a great opportunity to Christianize,” Raglow said.
The Christian Chronicle article documented Memorial Road’s outreach to Afghan refugees, including the Hashemis. The piece made clear that conversion was a goal of the church’s engagement.
‘We Are Going to Take Her‘
Safi spent months in Virginia working as an advisor for the Kuwaiti embassy and a translation services firm before he had the resources to travel to Oklahoma. When he could finally visit, his niece’s reaction was immediate.
“She was flying,” Safi said. “She was very happy.”
That visit brought Safi into direct conflict with Jason Garner. Safi said that S.S.’s biological parents, concerned that their daughter was not being raised in America according to their wishes, asked him to seek custody of S.S. When Garner learned that Safi intended to seek guardianship, the relationship turned hostile. Garner told Safi that he knew Oklahoma’s rules, and that Safi would not win guardianship because he lacked a wife and Oklahoma residency, Safi said.
Safi said he was not deterred, despite a disturbing incident in which Garner showed Safi his gun collection in a way that Safi interpreted as menacing.
Hashemi recalled Garner’s position clearly.
“Garner said that if someone comes from outside, and we don’t know who they are, then we are going to take [S.S.],” Hashemi said.
Hashemi said that he had insisted to Garner that any transfer of custody be handled through legal channels. He said his own knowledge of the subsequent court proceedings was minimal. At a hearing, he said, the judge asked only his name before issuing an order.
“The only thing the judge asked me was ‘What is your name?’” Hashemi said. “That’s it. And then they make an order, and they said that after this day that [S.S.] has to live with the Garner family.”
Janie Tapia, the Oklahoma City attorney who represented Garner, declined to comment. A.J. Ferate, Garner’s appellate attorney with Spencer Fane, also declined an interview request on behalf of his client.
A Chaotic Trial
Safi contacted Dallas-based attorney Sehla Ashai, who previously represented an Afghan couple who said that an American soldier effectively stole their baby after a raid by U.S. forces killed the infant’s family.
To represent S.S.’s biological parents, Dallas-based attorney Sehla Ashai contacted Mikael Bryant, general counsel of National Litigation Law Group and a member of Oklahoma’s Muslim community, for help. Bryant, along with Oklahoma City attorney Rob Hopkins, formed the legal team representing Ghulam Nabi Safi and S.S.’s parents.
Bryant described a custody trial that stretched across six months — a week’s worth of testimony — heard in the courtroom of Oklahoma County Special Judge Michelle “Shel” Harrington, a former divorce attorney who ascended to the bench just months before the fight over S.S. erupted.
Last September, Oklahoma Watch covered another of Harrington’s cases. Matthew Simonton successfully fought for his right to visit his mother, Estelle Simonton, who is under the guardianship of Adult Protective Services.
“I should have some rights as an American citizen,” Estelle Simonton said at the time. “It’s the law that is taking me away from my family, who I dearly love.”
Harrington subsequently issued a restraining order preventing the press from further interviewing Simonton.
For Andy Lester, chair of the Oklahoma Free Speech Committee, Harrington’s order encroached on the First Amendment.
“[This ruling] looks like a restriction on Ms. Simonton, but, as worded, it purports to bar all press,” Lester said at the time. “That is a step too far.”
From S.S.’s guardianship trial, Oklahoma Watch obtained audio recordings made by Azizah Hashemi in which she made graphic allegations about what would happen to S.S. in Garner’s custody. The recordings also included claims about her own role in transferring the child. A translation by Alqalam Nangarhar Translation Center documented the contents, and an independent Pashto translator retained by Oklahoma Watch confirmed the character of the recordings.
“The general tone of the audio recordings is taunting, aggressive, and centered on intimidation and revenge,” the second translator said in an email.
The recordings were one of numerous exhibits presented as evidence in Harrington’s courtroom, Bryant said.
“They had no argument,” Bryant said. “The only thing they ever said about Ghulam Nabi is that when all the families were in this room with Catholic Charities, and there’s a room full of adults arguing, [S.S.] seemed tense. And she was sitting next to her uncle. That was the only argument of substance they ever made.”
Theresa Flannery, senior director of social services at Catholic Charities, who attended the meeting Bryant described, said she recalled nothing that would have indicated S.S.’s preference for anyone. Flannery was called as a witness at trial but said that she could not recall what she had been asked.
The case ended with custody of S.S. awarded to Daniel and Amy Roberts — the youth and family pastor of Memorial Road Church of Christ and a vice president of admissions at Oklahoma Christian Academy, respectively. Neither responded to requests for comment.
Safi was granted limited visitation rights. Bryant said Harrington left open the possibility of returning S.S. to her parents if they arrived in the United States, but until then, S.S. would remain with the Roberts family.
“A full week of trial, and I still don’t understand how they were actually able to win that thing,” Bryant said.
Safi said that as of February, S.S.’s biological parents had relocated from Pakistan to Germany. Attorneys will soon file a motion in Harrington’s courtroom to have S.S. sent to Germany to be reunited with them.
Orders Entered
Without Following Rules
The case of S.S. is not an isolated example. Another case from Harrington’s courtroom in the adult system reveals how Oklahoma guardianship sometimes fails those it is meant to protect.
When she was five years old, Norma June Bowden performed a daring 12-foot ladder dive at the 1938 World’s Fair in Los Angeles.
Nearly a century later in Oklahoma City, 90 years old and widowed, Norma June Harris became the subject of a contentious guardianship battle among four of her children, represented in the main by two sons, Glenn Harris Jr., a wealthy insurance agent, and Hal Harris, a flight instructor.
Norma Harris was a feisty, independent-minded business owner who did not respond docilely when Glenn Harris first sought and was granted temporary guardianship over his mother’s estate, Hal Harris said.
“My brother is very domineering and controlling,” Hal Haris said. “He needs to be in control of everything or everyone will pay like hell.”
Norma Harris marched to the courthouse so she could tell the judge who originally heard the case that she did not need guardianship, Hal Harris said.
The judge revoked the temporary guardianship; no finding of incapacity was entered. Norma Harris promptly rewrote her 2010 will to exclude Glenn Harris.
Glenn Harris appealed, and managed to get the first judge disqualified. Harrington was then assigned to the case.
The first irregularity in the case, Hal Harris said, was Harrington’s order to assign a guardian ad litem, a court-appointed advocate, to Norma Harris’s case in the absence of any finding of incapacity.
“My mom was adamantly opposed to it,” Hal Harris said.
A civil case was filed alongside the guardianship case, making some of the proceedings public and drawing in more attorneys whose fees began to drain the estate over which the battle was being fought.
An attorney who worked on the case was struck by the number of judicial decisions that were made without any finding of incapacity. It was a fundamental denial of due process, the source said.
“All the significant orders just got entered without following the rules,” the source said.
Norma Harris died on May 4, 2025.
Glenn Harris continued the fight. Three sources familiar with the case expressed surprise that, in choosing among Norma Harris’ children for a special administrator of her estate, Harrington chose Glenn Harris, the son that Norma Harris had written out of her will.
After a November 2025 hearing, Glenn Harris called Oklahoma Watch to offer his unvarnished opinion of guardianship judges.
“They don’t know shit,” Glenn Harris said. “They don’t know the law. It’s mind-boggling.”
A dim view of Harrington was a rare point of agreement between the feuding Harris brothers.
“She is inept and incompetent, and she should not be a judge,” Hal Harris said.
Frustrated litigants may or may not be the best source to expound on the performance of guardianship judges. However, Diane Dimond, a seasoned investigative journalist who wrote numerous stories about the guardianship system nationwide before authoring a book on the subject, is highly qualified. Dimond singled out the secrecy of guardianship and conservatorship systems as central to their susceptibility to fraud and abuse.
She also pointed to the role of guardianship judges.
“There are so many threads to abusive and financially exploitative guardianships that it’s hard to grab on to one and say, ‘This is the problem,’” Dimond said. “But after hearing hundreds of stories, I came to realize that none of this would happen except for the judges.”
Dimond offered a singular piece of advice for anyone investigating the system.
“Always look at the background of these judges,” Dimond said.
Oh, For the Love of God
Since issuing her ruling against the press, Harrington’s online presence has begun to evaporate. Her LinkedIn page has been taken down, as has the website for the solo law firm she ran prior to becoming a judge. Harrington advertised herself as a “divorce attorney who doesn’t like divorce.”
By way of contrast, a side hustle as a humorist and public speaker that Harrington has sustained since at least 2016 has not disappeared.
A website, fatbottomfiftiesgetfierce.com, promotes two books that are collections of satiric neologisms. Despite Amazon rankings below 5 million, the website claims that the first book was a bestseller and the second a #1 bestseller. A corresponding Facebook group boasts of 487,000 followers and has continued to feature pithy daily axioms even after Harrington took on the role of special judge in December 2023.
Harrington uses a second Facebook group, Oh, For the Love of God!, with 83,000 followers, to offer similar daily tidbits with an explicit Christian theme.
During the months of the custody fight over Afghan refugee S.S., which resulted in the girl being given to an evangelical family despite the presence of a fit biological relative, Harrington put out hundreds of posts espousing bits of scripture.
An 11-Minute Hearing
A third case of Harrington’s, another child case, reveals that the underlying problems in the Oklahoma guardianship system do not begin or end in a single courtroom.
In 2014, Kristine and Dennis Rice were awarded co-guardianship of Dennis Rice’s granddaughter, K.R., then an infant. K.R.’s biological mother was in prison in Colorado; her biological father was unknown.
Kristine Rice raised K.R. as her own child for more than a decade.
The Rice marriage deteriorated. In 2018, a physical altercation resulted in Dennis Rice’s arrest; a police report photo documents an injury to Kristine Rice’s face. In 2021, K.R., then about 7 years old, wet herself during one of Dennis Rice’s outbursts of anger, Kristine Rice said. Kristine Rice left with K.R. and complex court battles began.
The first guardianship judge assigned to K.R.’s case, Special Judge Allen J. Welch, affirmed supervision orders limiting Dennis Rice’s visitation. Dennis Rice then disappeared from the proceedings from June 2023 to January 2025.
When he returned, Welch had retired. The case was transferred to Harrington, who immediately restored Dennis Rice’s visitation rights.
Oklahoma Watch obtained treatment reports from K.R.’s therapist that were available to Harrington and contained direct statements from the child.
In January 2025, K.R. described home with Kristine Rice as her only refuge: “Well, I feel like I don’t get a break from stuff happening in my life so school, my friends, and being at home helps distract me from everything else but now it’s like I can’t escape it at all.”
In March 2025, K.R. said she did not want overnight visits with Dennis Rice: “I definitely know that I don’t want to do any overnights with him though, unless I was somehow able to trust him again but I know his anger is still there.”
By April 2025, K.R. was expressing fear about the future: “I’m afraid of how he’ll treat me and I’m so scared that he will somehow get all the control and keep me from ever seeing my mom again.”
On Oct. 8, 2025, Kristine Rice filed a motion to have Harrington removed from the case. The following day, because of that motion, Oklahoma County Special Judge Karen Aguilar was brought in to conduct a hearing.
Kristine Rice’s attorney, Rob Hopkins, who was also on the team of attorneys representing the family of S.S., was out of state for medical reasons and participated only by phone. Technical difficulties impaired Hopkins’ ability to follow the proceedings. The hearing lasted 11 minutes. The transcript shows that Hopkins was given only a few minutes to argue his client’s position.
Despite the documented arrest for domestic abuse and the abbreviated hearing, Aguilar awarded sole custody of K.R. to Dennis Rice.
“She wasn’t going to give Ms. Rice a fair shake,” said Hopkins, describing Harrington’s position before the recusal motion was filed.
“Every time I go to court now, I lose more of her,” Kristine Rice said of K.R. “Every hearing strips her of rights. Every ruling pulls her further into a situation she begged me to protect her from.”
The story took another troubling turn in February, when Kristine Rice said she overheard, from outside Aguilar’s chambers, the judge telling Hopkins that she was recusing from the case. The reason: Courtney Schamel, K.R.’s court-appointed guardian ad litem, was also Aguilar’s personal attorney in Aguilar’s own divorce proceeding.
Court documents confirm that Schamel represents Aguilar. There was no explanation for why Aguilar did not disclose the conflict of interest at the time of the 11-minute hearing that determined K.R.’s fate.
In December 2025, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Amy Palumbo separately removed Harrington from K.R.’s case, citing the high probability of bias given the recusal motion Kristine Rice had filed.
The case has now been assigned to yet another judge. Dennis Rice, his attorney Lindsey Sherwood, and Schamel all declined to comment.
A System Under Strain
The systemic shortcomings in these three cases — compressed hearings, undisclosed conflicts of interest, sealed records that make outside scrutiny nearly impossible — reflect problems that experts say are widespread in American guardianship courts, and that Oklahoma is particularly ill-equipped to address.
Furthermore, the law has not kept pace with the scenarios that guardianship courts now encounter. Child guardianship cases in Oklahoma are presumptively closed, making them even harder to investigate than adult guardianship cases.
In adult guardianship cases, the financial stakes compound the problem.
The guardianship industry handles an estimated $50 billion in wards’ assets annually nationwide, according to Rick Black, founder of the Center for Estate Administration Reform, which has investigated more than 5,000 suspect adult guardianships since 2013.
“A system that is incapable of correcting its most outrageous defects is the definition of a broken system,” Black said. “Sadly, due to the influence and independence of this system’s managers and beneficiaries, executive and legislative branch leaders in each state have not taken appropriate action. In this regard, the checks and balances between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches are all failing vulnerable Oklahomans and their loved ones.”
Journalist Dimond continued to hold that the quality of guardianship judges is the linchpin on which all other problems with the guardianship system turn.
“People don’t understand,” Dimond said. “Judges in these cases can erase your will, your power of attorney, your health care proxy — they can even break your irrevocable trust.”
Attorneys familiar with Oklahoma’s guardianship system said the bench is unevenly prepared. Several lawyers said the system could be improved with training for new judges before they take office and continuing education as their careers proceed.
“If you get elevated to special judge and you’ve never practiced in probate or guardianship, it’s gonna be an uphill climb so you don’t get bamboozled by counsel who appear before you,” said one guardianship attorney who practices in multiple states.
Anthony Palmieri, former president of the National Guardianship Association and a long-time fraud investigator in the Florida guardianship system, said that most guardianship judges are sincere professionals but that bad actors exist.
“I’ve found cases in which the professional guardian was engaging in corruption with the judiciary,” Palmieri said.
Cost is its own obstacle. Attorneys said it is nearly impossible to fully litigate a guardianship case in Oklahoma for less than $100,000, a threshold that puts meaningful legal recourse out of reach for most families.
Canadian jurist Brownstone acknowledged the differences between his system and Oklahoma’s, and argued that transparency ought to serve as a form of accountability.
“I do think that would help people come to understand decisions by the same judge that are off the rails,” Brownstone said. “If the documents were public, more people would find out about these decisions and then they could get together and make an effort to get this person removed.”
For Kristine Rice, the system’s failures are not abstract. She found a provision in Title 43 of Oklahoma statutes — the section governing marriage, not guardianship — that appears to directly contradict Aguilar’s order granting sole custody of K.R. to Dennis Rice. Section 109.3 specifies that, absent other evidence, custody should not be granted to anyone who has engaged in abusive or harassing behavior, and establishes a rebuttable presumption against such grants.
Kristine Rice’s fight will continue with another hearing before Oklahoma County Special Judge Martha Oakes on April 7. It has been more than five months since K.R. saw the only woman she ever knew as mother.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Mar. 19, 2026, to correct Ghulam Nabi Safi’s job description.
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11-minute hearings, hidden conflicts: inside Oklahoma’s broken guardianship system
