My four-year-old daughter, Emma, stood completely still for a moment—then suddenly rushed toward the pastor, shouting something that brought the entire room into stunned silence.

Not an acquittal.

But it is a less cowardly way of approaching the problem.

I heard him say, for the first time, that his mother had spent years punishing him with shame, isolation, cold, confinement, silences, and phrases that seemed like discipline but were actually always small forms of moral sadism.

He told stories from his childhood that suddenly took on a different hue: dark closets, forced fasts, ice-cold water, hours on his knees, prayers repeated until his throat bled.

I knew then that Miriam hadn’t improvised with me.

He perfected his method over decades.

That didn’t make me want to hug him.

It made me better understand the magnitude of the rotten legacy I had lived with, believing that love would be enough to interrupt it.

It’s not enough.

It is never enough if no one dares to name violence before it kills.