Discredit the victim first.

Establish, before she can even speak, that she is unstable, unreliable, not to be trusted, and then whatever she says, however true, arrives pre-refuted.

My parents were not simply lying about that night.

They were building, methodically, a world in which my voice had no weight, in which my truth would sound like the raving of an unwell woman, in which their word, backed by their money and their status and their reputation, would always, automatically, outweigh mine.

They were trying to take not just my safety, but my standing as a person whose account of her own life could be believed.