A quiet, overcast morning settled gently over the small town as a modest family made their way toward the local police station. The building, made of pale bricks and framed by tall windows, usually represented authority and order, a place people visited only when something had gone terribly wrong. On this particular day, however, the visitors were not criminals, witnesses, or complainants. They were a young mother and father, holding tightly to the hands of their tiny daughter, who could not have been more than a toddler. Her cheeks were flushed from crying, her eyelashes clumped together with dried tears, and her small body trembled with every shaky breath she took.

For several days, she had barely slept, barely eaten, and barely smiled. She clung to her parents constantly, whispering the same haunting words over and over again: she needed to confess. She had done something terrible. She had committed a crime. At first, her parents thought it was a phase, a misunderstanding, perhaps something she had overheard on television or from older children. But as the hours turned into days and her distress only deepened, they realized it was something more.