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to her, staffers finally arranged for her to meet with her parents, who had been coming to the hospital demanding to see her. (The district attorney’s office ultimately dismissed the sexualassault charges against Carl, saying there was no evidence to prosecute.) Treva sat with Carl and Patsy in the presence of a social worker and a therapist as her parents told her to admit that she had been lying about the rape. Treva rose and said that they were the ones who were the liars, that they didn’t love her, and then she announced that she had nothing more to say and that she wished to return to her room.
VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON—1997
    Brianna Stewart seemed so grateful just to have the chance to be at Evergreen High. Each morning, she rode a city bus to the school, her backpack crammed with her textbooks and her Bible. Like a lot of students she had trouble with algebra, but she shone in English. She was able to quote entire passages
of Macbeth
from memory, the Shakespeare play the sophomore class was required to read, and for extra credit she wrote poems and stories, including one about a little girl who had only imaginary friends as playmates.
    Almost every day she came to school in the same outfit—overalls, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes—and she wore pigtails, a serious teenage fashion faux pas. One afternoon a classmate named Cheyanne McKay asked Brianna if she would like to go to the mall with a group of other girls. On the way there Cheyanne cranked up the stereo, and she and a couple of other girls in the car started dancing. When Brianna tried to dance along, she moved in jerky, arrhythmic ways, as if she had never danced to that kind of music in her life.
    To most of the Evergreen kids, Brianna was the classic teenage wallflower. But for Ken Dunn, an amiable sandy-haired sophomore, Brianna was unlike any other girl he had ever known. “I like the way she walks, and I really like the way she talks,” he told his friends, referring to her southern accent. In algebra he began imitating the way she wrote sevens on her homework, adding a short horizontal line through the middle of the number. He escorted herfrom class to class, and he smiled encouragingly at her during tennis practice, despite the fact that she was easily the worst player on the girls’ team. He spent much of his time helping her work on her lines for her drama class. Brianna was a hopelessly awkward actress, yet she still tried out for all the school plays. Perhaps out of pity, the drama teacher put her in the chorus of the school’s production of
Man of La Mancha
, where she moved leadenly across the stage, smiling bravely, making stilted gestures, and nearly colliding with the other performers.
    Soon, Ken and Brianna were swapping flirtatious notes. (“Hi!” Brianna wrote. “What’s up? I know—the great blue sky!!! … You’re the best guy I’ve ever known as a friend. You’re more than that to me … Class of 2000 rules!”) In his 1978 brown El Camino, known around school as the Turd Tank, Ken began taking Brianna on little dates—to the bargain stores in downtown Vancouver, to the roller rink, and to the mall, where they sat in the food court and talked. He attended services with her at the Glad Tidings Church and went with her to the Thursday-night youth group meetings, where she often gave her testimony. He was amazed at the amount of Scripture Brianna knew. He told his parents that she must have studied the Bible for years—for years!
    Initially, Brianna told Ken only a few details about her past. But sitting at the food court one day, Brianna took a deep breath and told Ken stories she said she hadn’t told anyone. She said she had watched her stepfather stab her mother to death and carry the body away. He then made tapes of himself and his friends raping her, which he sold on the black market. When she became pregnant at the age of 11 or 12, he pushed her down a flight of stairs to force her to miscarry. She went to the police