And when the prosecutors sat across from her, and she insisted for weeks that she had only ever helped these children, that they’d have rotted in orphanages, that wealthy families gave them better lives, the lead prosecutor asked her one question that ended the argument.

“If you were only helping them,” he said, “why did you forge their parents’ signatures, destroy their records, and erase every trace of who they were?” She had no answer.

There is no answer.

Help does not require a child to be made to disappear.

Chapter 18 — Why He Hid the Bread

My son, I learned, had been passed through three homes in seven years.

The first family kept him under two years, until the woman died.