“That is how she learns to behave.”
Those seven words made my blood run cold. It has been three years since that scene, and I can still hear the echo of that applause. The dry, rhythmic clapping of a mother watching her son beat my daughter.
My name is Elena Vance. I am 57 years old. I am a family law attorney specializing in domestic violence cases. I have spent 32 years defending women who could not defend themselves. I have faced corrupt judges, violent husbands, and entire families protecting the abuser. But nothing, absolutely nothing in my career, prepared me to see my own daughter being beaten right in front of me.
