Chapter 17 — The Ruling

Piece by piece, in the flat neutral light of that courtroom, their carefully built story came apart, and what was left standing underneath it was the truth, plainly visible at last.

My daughter had been systematically isolated.

Her phone had been taken, again and again, specifically so that she could not call me.

She had been locked out of the house, in bad weather, as punishment.

When the isolation and fear produced exactly the anxiety you would expect, that anxiety had been recorded as evidence of her instability.