THE GLASS SLIPPER

THE GLASS SLIPPER: WHEN CINDERELLA SNAPPED Nichole Hartley knows exactly how the justice system fails abuse victims-she's watched it happen for five years as a domestic violence coordinator. She's filed the paperwork, attended the hearings, and documented every failure. She's watched women do everything right and die anyway while their abusers walk free on technicalities. She's buried the bodies. She's counted the statistics. And she's stopped believing the system will ever change. Then her own repressed memories surface-childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Finally, he's facing trial. Finally, there might be justice. But the case keeps stalling: continuances, delays, motions to suppress her testimony. Every postponement is legal, procedural, by the book. And it's destroying her. At work, another client is beaten into a coma. Another protection order is violated without consequence. At home, her husband Jake watches helplessly as the woman he loves transforms into someone darker. Her six-year-old daughter asks, "Why do you look sad even when you smile?" Then the voice starts. At first, it's just a whisper-sarcastic, teenage, pointing out what Nichole already knows: They'll never face justice. But maybe you could change that. When Nichole attends a victim's funeral-another preventable death, another abuser walking free-the voice gets louder. More insistent. More detailed about exactly what could be done to protect the women the system has abandoned. And Nichole has everything she needs: years of training, access to case files and addresses, knowledge of how abusers operate and where they live. The system taught her how to identify dangerous men. It never occurred to anyone what she might do with that information.