He gets his version on the record first, and dressed in the language of concern — we’re so worried about her, she’s been so aggressive, so manipulative, we just don’t know what to do — so that when the victim finally, desperately, says what is happening to her, she is not stepping into a neutral silence.

She is stepping into a story that has already been written to cast her as the villain, and every true thing she says only makes her sound more like the unstable girl they promised everyone she was.

That is why Maya stopped talking.

Not only because it got her punished — but because Patricia told her, in so many words, that no one would believe her, and Maya was smart enough to see that they had already made it true.

They had built the disbelief before they needed it.

My daughter was not just being hurt.