Chapter 6 - What Lizzy said
The child advocacy interview was not performed by me.
Thank God.
My instinct was to ask everything.
How many times?
Did Grandma hit you?
Did Grandpa know?
What did scary place mean?
Who took money?
Children should not become interrogators’ tools simply because adults want certainty.
The forensic interviewer used open prompts.
“Tell me about Grandma’s house.”
Lizzy talked about:
Blue couch.
Toast.
School bus.
Grandpa watching baseball.
Teddy.
Then:
“The quiet room.”
“What is the quiet room?”
“The box room.”
“What happens there?”
“I sit.”
“How do you get out?”
“Grandma lets me.”
“What if you want to come out?”
“She says not yet.”
“Can you open the door?”
“No.”
“How many times have you been there?”
Lizzy held up fingers.
Changed them.
Then said:
“A lot but not every day.”
Useful in a six-year-old way.
Not precise.
“Why do you go there?”
“When I’m rude.”
“What is rude?”
“Crying loud.”
“Anything else?”
“Not eating. Asking for Mommy.”
Her interviewer paused.
“Who is Mommy?”
Lizzy’s face changed.
“My old mommy.”
Rachel.
That line broke me when I read the summary later.
Apparently Lizzy sometimes cried for her dead mother at bedtime.
Gloria treated prolonged crying as:
“working herself up.”
She used the closet to force calm.
Did Gloria starve her regularly?
No evidence.
Did she lock her overnight previously?
No.
Lizzy described prior closet periods that sounded like ten to thirty minutes.
Still inappropriate.
Still frightening.
The storm night was the first known prolonged confinement.
Why longer?
Because Gloria left.
May you like
Walt did not check.
Two adult failures converged.
