Chapter 16
(Laura's POV)

Okay, I think I'm beginning to understand what this is really about... and if this is about what I think it is then I have to tread carefully here. Commander Adama, the stubborn but rational military man I know I can handle but, as I found out the hard way when I jeopardized Lieutenant Thrace's safety by sending her back to Caprica, the 'papa bear protecting his cub' mode is a different story altogether... and that is what I have here. Sure, she is not his daughter --not in the biological sense of the word anyway-- but in a way that only serves to make matters worse. With his own son Bill has a tendency to go out of his way to prove to the world that there is no preferential treatment but when it comes to his unofficial 'daughter' that is not a concern and that means that he is free to go into an overprotective rampage without having to worry about the possibility of being accused of nepotism... and you really don't want to be in his path when he does that.

"Her mother hurt her, didn't she?" I ask softly, saying what he obviously can't bring himself to.

"You knew?" he asks, sounding more than a little surprised at that.

"I wasn't sure, not until now, but I suspected that much," I admit.

"How...?"

"As you have pointed out more than once, I'm a school teacher, Bill. I could sit here and tell you that child abuse is something so rare that I have never encountered it before but that would be a lie. The truth is that it is something I've seen more times than I care to remember and it is also something I learned to recognize a very long time ago. Lieutenant Thrace may not be a child but that doesn't change the fact that the signs are unmistakably there."

"And you didn't say anything?"

"It wasn't my place, not to mention that I had no way of knowing that you didn't know."

"Yes, her mother hurt her... badly."

"Meaning?"

"To quote Cottle 'when you start counting a child's fractures by the dozen, chances are that there is a problem'... and he has identified at least seventeen."

"I see," I say, wincing as I remember way too many casts I saw in my years as a teacher, casts I always suspected should not have been necessary. The funny thing is that up until now I had mostly thought of those casts in isolation and I had never really stopped to consider how many of those a single child could collect over the years.

"How could something like this have been allowed to happen?" asks Bill, pulling me out of my musings.

"I don't know... and in the end the how doesn't really matter."

"You said that a teacher would have recognized the signs, so why didn't anyone ever do anything to put an end to it, why didn't any of them ever do anything to protect her?" he pushes, obviously still looking for someone to blame.

"Teachers are only human," I remind him. "Some may not have noticed, others may not have cared... and, even if they did, the sad fact is that by the time a child gets to school more often than not it is already too late."

"Too late?"

"Yes. As I found out the hard way in my second year, the one thing you need if you are going to intervene is a child who is actually willing to come forward but abused children have a hard time trusting anyone to begin with and you only have them for a year. More often than not that is not nearly enough for you to get past their defenses and to get them to open up so there's almost nothing you can do," I explain.

"What happened?" he asks.

"I was young and rather naive... I was also teaching fourth grade at the time and there was a boy in my class who kept 'getting into fights' at home even though he was an only child and he was extremely quiet in school so that picture didn't really add up. I was certain that he was being abused but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get him to talk to me. Eventually, after he showed up one morning with an eye swollen shut and a split lip, I decided to report the situation anyway. Since a report had been filed, a social worker was assigned to the case but he still wouldn't say anything. Nothing came out of it, obviously, except for the fact that two weeks after the investigation was officially closed he came to school with his left arm in a cast. He said that he had fallen but we both knew that was a lie. I'll never forget how he looked at me, as if I were personally responsible... and maybe in a way I was."

"You were only trying to help."

"Yes, but as far as he was concerned that didn't matter. Besides, the truth is that in all but the most serious of cases the foster care system wasn't much of an improvement so unless you suspected that a child's life was literally in danger --and had the evidence to prove it-- the best thing you could do was to pretend not to notice."

"It's just that..."

"That this is not some random stranger but someone you care about?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Well, whatever happened, you have to remember that it probably helped shape Lieutenant Thrace into the woman she is today and, as much as you may not want to admit it, it almost certainly saved her life."

"How can you say that?" asks Bill, sounding utterly horrified at the thought.

"I can say it because it's true. The odds of anyone surviving the cylons' attack were close to one in a million and you know it. If Lieutenant Thrace's past had been different in any significant way then chances are that her life would have followed a different path, at least to some extent. Seeing how even the smallest deviation would probably have resulted in her not being confined to the brig on board this particular battlestar when that attack took place, I would say that claiming that her past almost certainly saved her life on that day is not too much of a stretch," I point out.

"That still doesn't make it right," he huffs.

"No, it doesn't and I never said that it did but you can't change the past and you know it. Child abuse is an ugly business, believe me, I know, but the truth is that even if she was abused as a child, Lieutenant Thrace is not a little girl any more and you can't treat her as if she were."

"I know that but..."

"But you are still trying to come to terms with this?"

"Yes, and the truth is that I don't understand. I don't understand how this could have been allowed to happen in the first place and I certainly don't understand why she never told me about it."

"As I told you before, abused children don't trust easily... and, to make matters worse, more often than not they are convinced that that abuse is actually justified."

"That's crazy!"

"Is it? Think about it, Bill: child abuse is the ultimate betrayal of trust but it is one that cuts so deep that all too often the betrayed can't even recognize it for what it is. Parents are expected to discipline their children, to teach them right from wrong and children are taught to accept that discipline as a token of love, to respect, honor and obey their parents. That's the way the system is supposed to work but the line between discipline and abuse is not always clear, not even for an adult, so how can a child --one that doesn't even have a frame of reference to begin with-- be expected to know when that line has been crossed, when that so-called 'discipline' has become something else, something that is both unjustified and unjustifiable?"

"But , as you pointed out, Kara is not a child. Besides, while I agree that there may be some instances in which the line between discipline and abuse is not all that clear, that is not what we have here," he insists.

"Actually, Bill, it is. I know it is hard for us to comprehend but you have to keep in mind that children don't have the means to recognize their own abuse for what it is because more often than not that abuse is the only thing they have ever known and therefore they perceive it as being 'normal'. As for the fact that Lieutenant Thrace is not a child, you are absolutely right about that, but in a way you are also wrong because somewhere in there is a scared little girl, one that is probably still convinced that she deserved everything she got because she was 'bad'," I point out, knowing that he is too stubborn to let this go but also knowing that if he wants to get to the bottom of this, if he wants to try to reach that little girl, Bill really has his work cut out for him. Simply put, if he wants to try to reach that little girl he is going to have to outstubborn Starbuck and that is not going to be easy, not even for him.