Darling Rose Gold
INTRODUCTION
My daughter didn’t have to testify against me. She chose to. It’s Rose Gold’s fault I went to prison, but she’s not the
only one to blame. If we’re pointing fingers, mine are aimed at the prosecutor and his overactive imagination, the gullible jury, and the bloodthirsty reporters. They all clamored for justice.
What they wanted was a story. (Get out your popcorn and Buncha Crunch, because boy, did they write one.) Once upon a time, they said, a wicked mother gave birth to a
daughter. The daughter appeared to be very sick and had all sorts of things wrong with her. She had a feeding tube, her hair fell out in clumps, and she was so weak, she needed a wheelchair to get around. For eighteen years, no doctor could figure out what was wrong with her.
Then along came two police officers to save the daughter. Lo and behold, the girl was perfectly healthy—the evil mother was the sick one. The prosecutor told everyone the mother had been poisoning her daughter for years. It was the mother’s fault the girl couldn’t stop vomiting, and that she suffered from malnutrition. Aggravated child abuse, he called it. The mother had to be punished.