Nobody looked like the helpless image that the word victim had once conjured in my mind.

When it was my turn to speak, I said I owned a successful construction company and knew how to protect a contract.

Then I said I had not known how to protect myself from my own son.

The group leader, Mrs.

Alvarez, nodded.

‘Family can make a person question protections they would insist on for anybody else.’

I went back the following Friday.

Eventually I stopped sitting near the door.