Andrea Dunlop

And, you know, what you're expressing, those are feelings I've gone through about my own sister.

I asked that question of Dr. Mark Feldman when I first met him.

Does she know?

Do people who do this understand what they're doing?

Because I think it's a much more comforting idea to think,

Oh, no, they really believe their kid's sick or they're, you know, they're confused or they're having this sort of mental health issue that makes them sort of not culpable for their behavior, right?

Because it's really horrible to think about someone doing this in a calculated, premeditated way.

But that is the reality.

And I think it's like we can still face that reality and preserve the humanity of everyone involved.

And I think that's important because I think when we make monsters out of perpetrators of crimes, we're holding it at a distance, right?

Like as watchers, we're saying, well, that would never happen to anyone I know.

That would never happen in my family.

That would never happen in my neighborhood.

That would never be a mom that's on my PTA.

And the reality of what we know about this abuse now is that it absolutely could be, you know, your family member, you know, you're in your situation now.

You know, your mom did have a history of abuse and came from, you know, I think as you've really revealed, a family of some pretty significant dysfunction in her own right.

My sister didn't.

Hope Ybarra didn't.

There's many perpetrators that there are some perpetrators that come from abusive backgrounds.

There's some that don't.