Margret asked me if I was aware that Ashley had told several people that her father was molesting her? I stared open-mouthed and gasped. She continued, saying that Ashley had gone to several acquaintances and related that he made her beg for cigarettes. In exchange for a smoke, he ordered her to come down to his office dressed in skimpy pajamas or without her bra. Margret continued, saying that if Mike allowed her to smoke this was a crime in itself because she was underage. Mike supposedly also had compromising photos of Ashley on his computer and had taken her on a business trip where he’d given her beer. Our daughter claimed that he routinely showed her porn he had downloaded from the internet, and she didn’t like how Mike touched her, such as patting her on the butt when she was on her bed. She had gone along with this stuff to please him and because she was afraid he’d hurt himself if she refused. Oh, and we locked her in her bedroom and put bars on her window.

I could only shake my head for a few moments, speechless. No way was this stuff true! No way! The man I knew and married would not have subjected Ashley to this. He was too conservative. But why would Margret and Dena be here if there wasn’t some kernel of truth in the allegations? The Mike of today was not the man I’d married. He had become so secretive and over-possessive of Ashley. Was this why? Was something going on behind my back? What was happening between Mike and Ashley that I didn’t know about?

Okay, there were some patterns that concerned me. First, there was the porn on the computer, but had he really shown any to Ashley? According to what she'd said to me, no. She'd told me that she was using the computer in his office and happened to find the nudie pictures on her own. The photos of her smoking, while tasteless, were not exactly inappropriate, and I’d seen nothing that suggested she took off her clothes for him. Maybe he had "patted her butt" but getting her to wake up in the morning was difficult, and just as surely, he’d also shaken her shoulder or jiggled her arm. As for the beer, Mike was so straight-laced that giving Ashley alcohol was beyond comprehension. How many times he’d berated her for drinking I couldn’t even remember.

Margret and Dena were looking at me expectantly. What was I supposed to say? That Ashley had lied, or at the very least, exaggerated? And yet, that seemed to be the most likely answer. I didn’t know her intentions, but she had everything to gain by making stuff up, including the possibility of staying in the area. For years she’d chafed under our parenting as if she expected to live a freer life elsewhere. She’d always been one for drama, and by establishing a CPS report, she was getting it in spades. Add to this, her victim mentality, and it started to make a lot of sense.

With the social workers listening in, I went back and began a more-detailed account of Ashley’s upbringing. I mentioned her birthmother, Ruby, and how it was well-known that the children were being neglected. Many in our church thought Ashley had been prenatally exposed to drugs, and CPS was a constant in the lives of all Ruby’s children. Sometimes her mother wanted to go out at night and party, leaving her in the apartment to cry out her needs and frustrations alone in the dark. How Ashley was not the "little doll on the shelf" her birthmom expected her to be, but a living child with curiosity and a temper who didn’t always do what Mommy wanted. We had brought this beautiful, fearful child into our household and lavished love on her, and she had grown up to be bright and talented, although troubled.

I described Ashley as a teenager, and how she had been in and out of misfortune since 8th grade. Making people feel sorry for her was a long-standing pattern, and in the end her past had caught up with her. Sending her to Covington High School six months before was the icing on the cake, and her repeated run aways were now forcing us, as Ashley’s parents, to secure an out-of-state school for her. We were doing the best we knew how working in a system of miles of red tape, and sometimes things went wrong. We weren’t perfect parents and never claimed to be.

If any parts of the allegations were true, they must be exaggerated. Ashley had been angling for emancipation for months. She refused to accept that she had drug and emotional problems, and she was always blaming somebody else for her actions. She saw herself as a victim, and in her way of thinking, she had the worst home life in the world, despite the fact that Mike had bent over backwards to try to get to know her and love her for herself. Despite me trying to keep tabs on her and the rest of the family.

Ashley expected to be allowed to do whatever she pleased whenever she wanted, and she just didn’t have the maturity to accept rules and limitations. We had taken her to see Heidi, who had encouraged us to allow Ashley to smoke, citing it as the least of our problems, but we stopped the therapy when Heidi’s discipline became too harsh. That therapist was the one who suggested putting an alarm, not a lock, on Ashley’s door, and because of her propensity for sneaking out at night, Mike had taken to sleeping in the hall until Ashley was asleep. As parents of a minor, I said, we would be held legally responsible for anything Ashley did in or outside of our house. We couldn’t just allow her to run free, and keeping a tight rein on her was the only way to make sure she stayed home at night.