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John Dobberstein - 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.
Full Article & Source:
11-minute hearings, hidden conflicts: inside Oklahoma’s broken guardianship system
