The family had to decide who spoke, and I had already decided, and Sophie asked for it.

She asked at the table, in front of everyone, and she made her case, and her case was this: she was the one named in the video. She was the one Michael’s threat was pointed at — *one child at a time* — and she was the one left behind as the hold.

She was six and she has no memory of being followed home from school, and everybody in that room had spent twelve years discussing what happened to her without her ever having said a word about it in an official proceeding.

I said, “You’re eighteen.”

“Yes.”

“You’d have to look at him.”