He was still, somewhere underneath the man in that courtroom, the boy who ran through our yard with scraped knees, who fell asleep against the side of his golden retriever, who once promised he would buy me a house someday so I would never have to worry.

I cried in the back of that courtroom for that boy, who was gone, who had perhaps been gone for a long time.

And I never once, then or since, regretted turning the man in.

Because I have learned the difference between two things that look alike and are not.

Loving your child is an instinct, deep and involuntary and mostly good.

But shielding your child from the consequences of what he has done to another human being is something else entirely — it is not love, it is complicity, and it purchases your child’s comfort with someone else’s life.