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My six-year-old nephew dragged his broken leg across seven blocks of pavement to reach my porch, with his starving three-year-old sister clinging to his shirt. I was fixing a loose hinge when I heard scraping on the steps and turned to see Drew crawling toward me, pale, shaking, and whispering, “She locked us downstairs again.” I called 911 before I even understood the whole story. But when he told me about Reena’s punishment room, I knew my brother had died believing a terrible lie.

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closed properly. He rebuilt one side of the crib because he disliked the screws provided by the manufacturer.

One afternoon, I found him sitting alone on the nursery floor.

“I should have said something sooner,” he told me.

“About what?”

“The way Gerald spoke to your mother. The way Aaron let him.”

I sat beside him.

“I noticed it too.”

“I thought keeping continue reading …

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