And then she said: “So I don’t get to say it.”

And Wendell Baptiste said: “No.

Not in a courtroom.

And I am sorry about that and I am not going to pretend it is the same thing as being heard.”

I have thought about that exchange for two years.

Because the thing everybody assumes about this story is that my daughter’s word was the heart of it.

Her word was the one thing we could not use.

She was pushed into a table in her own house, she had the key taken out of her pocket while she was on the floor, and the injury that proved she had been hurt is the same injury that made her unusable as a witness.