Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh. 'I think Lily should not be hanging out at illegal migrant camps where that would remotely come up' is true and isn't going to help to say right now. 'Lily's family has papers' is not really the relevant piece here, is it. 

'Promise me that if Lily admits who abused her, you're going to tell me rather than go vigilante murder them' is NOT going to help to say even though she really wants to, and wouldn't be at all surprised if Lily does admit it to Iomedae well before she's willing to trust Evelyn enough; it wouldn't be the first time that's come up. 

"- What do you mean, they don't see you as people whose word has meaning?" she says instead. 

(She wants to argue with it. She's...not sure she can, rightly, argue with it. She's seen it happen more than once, that a child in foster care disclosed some kind of abuse and wasn't believed.) 

"Lily is a" the English word for slave is apparently "foster child. She cannot talk good. She is not from a good family that will say to the court, Lily never lie in her life. When she get upset she scream like little baby. If Lily say a man hurt her, and the man is important, the court say, the man's word better than Lily.

If Lily say a man hurt her, and the man not important, then maybe the court kill the man, but - not because they know it true, because they don't care much. I think when I take Martin to the church that the government would care what I say because I am holy warrior. But the government not care about that. The government see me as a foster child. So maybe they say 'foster child word no meaning, no bother court with this', or maybe they say 'Martin no have papers, may as well kill him', but not - there is no chance that they will say, Iomedae would not lie, Iomedae's word tells us what happened, Iomedae swore on Bible. Right?"

Evelyn has no idea how to respond but this is...pretty intensely upsetting? 

"I would believe her," she says, surprised by the vehemence in her own voice. "I think that her social worker would believe her. The court - wouldn't take her word for it, they would want to get other evidence as well, because children can sometimes lie or be confused," and Diel, in fact, thinks that Iomedae is lying about her family and religion and thus plausibly lying about Martin, and Evelyn is now furious about that, " - but they would take it seriously enough to be worth going to court, to be worth sending police to talk to the person and other people who know them. Children sometimes lie, but - nine times in ten, if a child says, this man hurt me, they're telling the truth. And the system isn't always perfect, we don't always get it right, but I think we often manage to help children like Lily, if they're brave enough to tell someone they were hurt." 

She feels hot and flushed and there's a pressure in her chest and she should really not be getting this upset in a conversation with Iomedae, who is fifteen and her foster child and whose wellbeing is also her responsibility. 

"Help them how?"

"Lily lives with me now instead of her birth family, because at school she had bruises and she said some things to a teacher that made her think she was being hurt at home. We don't have enough evidence to take the person who hurt her to court, because she won't talk about it yet, but if she does tell me someday, and she's able to explain it well - you're right, it's harder because she can't speak well, but she's getting better at it - I think there's maybe a...three in four, maybe four in five chance that we manage to get enough evidence to send the person who hurt her to prison, where they can't ever hurt other children like her. And - you can ask her how she feels about it, not all children are happy to be taken into care even when their parents were very, very bad to them, but - I think Lily is glad to be away from where she used to live, and I think she's going to be okay, and I think she wouldn't have been if she had stayed with her natural family until she was an adult." 

"What evidence convince a court that not trust Lily word and not trust swear on Bible?"

....Wow, does Evelyn feel like getting into the kinds of evidence that were brought up in court in all of the past child sexual abuse cases she's been peripherally involved in, no, no she REALLY DOES NOT want to do that. That would involve having to get into CHILD PORNOGRAPHY RINGS and there is literally never a time where Evelyn considers that an appropriate conversation to have with a fifteen-year-old, whether or not said fifteen-year-old considers herself a holy warrior of God. Maybe especially not to a teenager with minimal understanding of American law and culture who considers herself a holy warrior of God, who knows what Iomedae might get it in her mind to do about suffering children. 

"When she was taken into foster care, they took pictures of the bruises she had, and they didn't look like bruises someone could get by accident, so we know that someone was hurting her, just not who to investigate - it might not even be her family, it might be a babysitter who watched her for them, or a friend who visited - but if she could tell us who, then the police would take it seriously. And - there are some things that little kids Lily's age aren't going to make up, because they're - not the kind of thing that's appropriate for adults to tell children about, or for them to see in cartoons - so the only way they would know how to describe it is if it had happened to them. And the police would talk to the neighbors, because often people have heard something or seen something, and it wasn't enough by itself for them to call the police about, but you can put it all together and see whether it fits with what the child said. ...Also sometimes adults who hurt children take pictures of it, or show their friends, I don't know why but that can be evidence in court."   

That is straightforwardly the most bizarre claim Iomedae has ever heard. “I don’t know this place,” she says, grudgingly. “I cannot say Lily you should tell government it won’t come kick us all out of the country, but I can tell her you think so.”

Evelyn can tell that Iomedae is skeptical, but not of what. "Lily's family wouldn't be kicked out of the country. They have papers, because they were born in the US. I...understand it's not fair, how happening to have been born in one place or another determines how a person is treated by the law, but it is how the law works in America and in a lot of places." 

“I know that. I did wrong by thinking I was an important person, not by not knowing some people are important to governments and some are not.”

Oh. Oh no. This is so upsetting and Evelyn isn't really sure what to do with it - she can't even really argue with it, though she's pretty sure that Iomedae is overcorrecting in some direction - 

"I'm sorry," she says. "I– I'm sorry it probably came across that I'm treating Lily being upset as more important than your friends. I know you're upset, and it makes sense to be. I appreciate that you're willing to be patient with me about it." 

And then they're home, and there's not really an excuse to awkwardly sit in the car prolonging an agonizing conversation, is there. Evelyn glances at Iomedae before unbuckling her seatbelt, though, in case Iomedae does have anything to add. 

"Lily is more important to you than my friends," says Iomedae, baffled. 

“…Lily’s safety and wellbeing are my responsibility, yes, and that isn’t true of your friends. That’s different from saying she - deserves to be safe more than they do.”
And Iomedae is ALSO her responsibility and so Iomedae’s feelings are important to her, but saying that out loud will not help at all. 

Iomedae feels like she is trying to crawl up the tallest mountain in the world while innocent people scream at her from the base of the mountain that her idiocy was so momentous it amounts to a betrayal, and Evelyn cannot see the mountain or hear the people, only that Iomedae is moving slower than usual. This is not Evelyn's fault but she doesn't like it much. "Yes, ma'am."

Evelyn feels like maybe there was no possible way to handle the ‘please don’t tell Lily that you got your friends seized by government because after you stabbed an attempted rapist you tried to get him to medical attention rather than murdering him’ conversation that wasn’t terrible and kind of wronging Iomedae, and maybe she shouldn’t have brought it up. Except that it would have been a terrible idea for Iomedae to say that to Lily, and Evelyn is not entirely sure of Iomedae possessing the common sense to soften it for seven-year-old ears, especially not when she’s clearly devastated. 

“I’ll email the social worker to see if they can find anything out about the kids,” she says, and then they can go in.

Jeremy has been playing Snakes and Ladders with Lily on the floor.

He looks up. “You’re back fast— oh.” His face falls. “What - happened…?”

"Lily is too small to hear what happen," says Iomedae. "If you want to hear we could go outside." That's probably safe, in broad daylight; she is not going to offer that they step into another room in the house.

Jeremy looks sort of uncomfortably at Evelyn, who nods to him. “O…kay,” he says, and agreeably follows Iomedae to the backyard. 

Lily is looking very uncertain and worried, but doesn't try to follow. She lets Evelyn scoop her up and hug her. 

"They are gone. La migra come for them and take away their children and send them far. Probably because I took Martin to the church for healing. Martin tell me do not do this, but I think he afraid the law will kill him, and the law should kill him, so I do it anyway. I did not know that they would destroy everyone lives for it. I did not know - I did not know they not care about holy warrior. I did not know they would take me as foster child. If I had known, I let Martin live or die, not take him to church. But I was stupid and had never kill person before and thought I was important, and now I have hurt many people who were only kind to me."

"...Oh no. That's so awful." Jeremy really wants to give her a hug but that would probably make her so uncomfortable. "Wow. I - man, I don't know what I would've done, I'm - not sure I could kill a person - but that doesn't make it less terrible. Man. Fuck ICE." - he glances self-consciously at the porch door. "Don't tell Mom I swore, but seriously." 

"She does not want Lily to know that if Lily tell the government a man hurt her then they will come destroy fifty people lives no reason."

Jeremy grimaces. "I mean, I don't think you should tell Lily - that specific thing - for one thing she doesn't go wandering around migrant camps by herself, that's not usually a risk. There - I mean, there are ways she could - make things happen that upset people, and I think she should know that even if Mom doesn't think it's age-appropriate - if a neighbor hurt her, and she tells, and the neighbor has kids, they'll have their kids taken away and good odds the kids and the adult are pissed about that, but - I guess Mom still thinks it's better for the children not to live with someone who abuses kids, even if they're upset at the time. ...I don't think that's the case with your friends, because ICE is evil, but social workers mostly aren't evil and the system is...just kind of not great."  

"If she says something about a neighbor, the neighbor's children will be turned into foster child?"

"...Usually, yeah, if she says an adult - hit her, or especially if she says they did sex things to her - the worry is that they'll do it to other children as well and so they're not a safe person to be around children. It's - it can be pretty fucking awful when someone makes up an allegation and doesn't realize that. But Lily wouldn't."