Empowerment
So, S did it--last Monday, she went through an interview that lasted over an hour about her abuse. She was as prepared as she could possibly be, I think. We had talked about everything that could go wrong, from her abusers getting angry and trying to find us to going all the way to trial and losing at the end. She still wanted to do it. She wrote down everything she could remember about each abuser, and she practiced reading what she'd written, and I pretended to be an officer who needed more details. Last Monday afternoon, we got the call. The officer made small talk about the weather. Then he put the recorder on, asked me if I was the only legal parent of my daughter, asked if he had my permission to interview her. And then, she said, "I have it all written down," and began to read. Two sentences in, he interrupted her. It wasn't enough to say she was raped, or tortured, or neglected--she had to be specific about body parts and where they went and how often, about w...