It depends, almost entirely, on one thing: whether there is a safe, loving adult who believes them, and stays, and tells them the truth.

A child who is harmed and then believed, and held, and told plainly that it was not their fault, can heal from almost anything, because the harm was a wound but the belief is the stitching, and a stitched wound closes.

It is the child who is harmed and then disbelieved, told they imagined it, or exaggerated it, or caused it, who carries it forever, because that child’s wound is never stitched, and an unstitched wound does not close; it just scars over crooked and aches for a lifetime.

Fiona’s odds turned, I am convinced, not in a courtroom but on the shoulder of a road, in the first hour, when a believing adult told her the truth before the lie could set.