The Misery Machine - The Case of Zara Qairina binti Mahathir

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

This week, Yergy and Drewby head back over to Malaysia to discuss a case that needs more discussion, and that is the case of Zara Qairina binti Mahatir. We first learned of Zara's case while recently on vacation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after seeing a #JusticeForZara bumper sticker. Zara was a 13-year-old girl from Sabah who was found clinging to life in a drainage ditch outside of her private boarding school. It was quickly assumed that Zara might have fallen from the 3rd floor window of the girl's dormitory. But when rumors began to circulate that Zara had been bullied by a group of older girls from affluent families, her case made it all of the way to the desk of the Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Support Our Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PayPal: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join Our Facebook Group: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: miserymachinepodcastTwitter: misery_podcastDiscord: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠#themiserymachine #podcast #truecrimeSource Materials Available Upon Request.

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Families measure their wealth, not in money, but in warmth. It was here that Zara Kairina Binti Mahatir grew up, and she was, by all accounts, full of life. Zara was 13 years old when the story began. Those who knew her described her as a cheerful, affectionate girl. She was not the kind of child who faded into the background. Zara was born to parents Mahatir Hashim and Narada Lamad, who later separated. She lived primarily with her mother who was an Ustaza or religious teacher. In 2025, Zara took a step that felt significant for any child her age.

She enrolled at SMCA Tandatu Mustafa and Papar Saba. For the sake of brevity, we'll be referring to it as SMCA for the remainder of the episode. now. SMKA is a religious boarding school known for academic discipline. Zara had barely been enrolled for six months when her world took a dark turn. She returned home on Saturday, July 12th. She cooked Rodi Tolore, a traditional bread made with egg and onions, before heading back to the dorm on the afternoon of Sunday, July 13th. It was the last time Narita would see her daughter alive. Boarding schools in Malaysia are not unusual.

For families in rural districts like Sipitong, they represent a pathway to access better education and opportunities than the village alone could offer. Students live within the school compound, and at SMCA, the girl dorms are housed in a multi-story block. Zara's room was on the third floor. Or into her mother, Zara chose to be sent to the Islamic religious secondary school in Pappar, as it was her wish. Also, because she saw many of her friends were staying in school hostels and while. wanted to experience it. She also idolized me, as I had stayed in a dorm before. Hence, Zara wanted to follow suit as she had always imagined the fun and joy of living with friends in a school dorm. The school records would later reveal that Zara's time at SMCA was not easy.

Just one month into her time there on March 14th, the school's discipline unit received a complaint from Zara herself, alleging that she had been sexually harassed by another student while sleeping in her dorm. We couldn't find any information on what the school did about it, if anything. And that would sadly become one of many unanswered questions of what happened to Zara during her stay at this school. About three months later, at approximately 3 to 4 a.m. on July 16th, Zara was found unconscious in a drain near the base of the girls' dorm building.

She'd either fallen or someone had thrown her off the third floor. Now, here's where things get weird. At the time of the incident, most of the other students were reportedly still awake. Quite an unusual circumstance on a weeknight at a boarding school, but one that would be corroborated by multiple students. The dorm was not quiet. Again, most of the students were awake. Yet, when Zara fell, allegedly, nobody saw it happen. Nobody claimed to have heard her scream.

And no one came forward as a witness. There were also no security cameras covering the area where she was found. She was discovered unconscious with one of her arms broken, both of her legs broken, and her spine broken, as well as internal injuries. Nobody knew how long she had been lying there for. What is clear is that the police received a report about the incident at 8.16 a.m., approximately four to five hours after Zara had been discovered. And that gap would become a major point of scrutiny. Zara was transported to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Saba. It is the largest and best-equipped government hospital in the state and sits roughly an hour's drive north of Papar.

Upon arrival, Zara, who was in a coma, was placed on life support. Doctors confirmed the severity of her injuries, broken limbs, internal damage, and most critically, catastrophic trauma to her brain. She had no brain function remaining. The machine was keeping her body alive. On July 17, 2025, the day after she was found, her family made the devastating decision that no parent should ever have to make. Life support was withdrawn, and Zahar was pronounced dead. According to her teacher, Nur Shukrya Mode Fousy who was present, and I quote, At that time, I was in the ward. Her father looked very emotional.

When the doctor was preparing to remove the ventilator, he held the bed and said, Zara, wake up Zara. Her body was brought home to Sipi Tong. She was buried at Tanjung Ubi Muslim Cemetery, located in the same village where she had grown up, or her mother had raised her and where she had cooked Rodi Toulur just days before. The Papar District Police Chief confirmed that a report, port had been received and that investigations were underway. On the surface, people believe this was simply a tragic case of a student accidentally falling from a dorm building. But there was no

post-mortem examination conducted on Zara's body. This is in any suspicious death a significant omission. An autopsy is a standard forensic means of establishing the cause of death. It confirms whether injuries match the proposed theory of events or not. Not to mention the importance of running toxicology on a body. Without it, the official record of how a person died relies entirely on circumstance and witness testimony. And in this case, there were no witnesses. And now there was no autopsy. Zara's mother, Narita, had signed a hospital consent form declining the autopsy,

which a family member does have the right to do. she would later imply that this was pushed on her and said she had done so out of shock and panic. But the form was also signed by the pathologist and the investigating officer, and to be clear, this does not excuse the actions of the investigators. If a death is suspicious, police can still demand an autopsy be done, and that didn't happen. Ultimately, the police were blamed for their failure to do so, as Zahara's death, absolutely qualified as suspicious. Lawyers representing the family would later allege that the police,

Police had also failed to collect Zara's clothes for forensic investigation, a basic step in any criminal investigation involving a potentially suspicious death. And this would form the basis of one of many formal complaints made by Zara's family in the weeks ahead. But as things stood right then, the investigation was closed. In the days following Zara's death, rumors began to spread, starting on social media and eventually becoming national news in Malaysia. Rumors are rumors, but they all pointed to the same thing.

Zara had been bullied. A 44-second audio clip was made public in which Zara could be heard speaking to her mother. In it, she described being threatened by another student, referred to only as Cac M. The student had-examma is unpredictable, but you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate-tiss disappear eczema. After an initial four-month-longer dosing phase, about four-and-10 people taking ebb glist, achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Ebglis, Librikizumab, LBKZ.

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Terms apply. Reportedly told her in Malay that if she touched her, she would be bleeding. Zara's mother confirmed that the audio was genuine. When the school's chief warden, Azari Abdul Sagab was questioned, he confirmed that the interaction had occurred in May of 2025, two months before Zara's death. He said the school had investigated the incident once the recording went public

and that no formal complaints had been received from Zara or her mother regarding her being bullied. Another student referred to on social media as tomboy was widely named online as one of Zara's bullies. Ward Nizari, however, claimed that the student had not been at the school on the night of July 16th. A fellow teacher had taken her

along with other students to Perlis for a school program. Perlis is a state in peninsular Malaysia that borders Thailand. She wouldn't have been in Saba when Zara fell. According to an article in Free Malaysia today, a student at SMCA claimed that Zara was having family issues at home. She said, and I quote, Zara had shared with me that her mother had even told her she was nearly killed by her father when she was younger. It is unclear how true this is. As Zara's parents were separated, and according to many reports,

her father hadn't been involved in her life until the incident. The student also claimed that Zara had been isolating herself several days before she was found unconscious and that she seemed depressed. The student also alleged that on the evening of July 15th, one of her dormmates had lost 300 Malaysian ring it in a bank card and Zara was accused of stealing them. She suggested to a group of girls that they should search Zara's locker but claimed that she left and did not participate. When she returned, she claimed to have found Zara on the ground by her locker in tears surrounded by a group of older girls denying that she had taken it. She claimed that the last time she saw Zara, she was on her way up to the third floor bathroom. Two other girls were alleged to have been inside of the bathroom collecting water. According to the student, she heard what sounded like someone stepping on a toilet bowl

when she and the others noticed Zara peering at them over one of the toilet cubicles. This supposedly terrified them and they ran back to their rooms. Witness accounts of how the school handled the aftermath were also alarming. According to testimony from security guard, Lena Mansoting, after Zara was taken away by ambulance, head warden Azaria Abdul-Sagop allegedly directed the students to clean up the bloodstains at the scene,

while security guard held the light for them to see what they were doing. To be clear, this is a school official directing students to clean up a crime scene where a fellow student could have possibly been murdered. Obviously, this became one of the most damaging pieces of testimony at the inquest. The security guard also testified

that the school did not allow students to call home or return to their families after the incident. Public phones were shut off. One parent who arrived at the school in the night of July 17th after learning of Zara's death was not allowed to take their daughter home. Students were essentially on lockdown and not allowed to leave the dorm until July 18th. On July 30th, 2025, nearly two weeks after Zara's death, posts went viral on Malaysian social media. It claimed that Zara's death had been orchestrated by a group of bullies at her school, some of whom were the children of prominent political figures. VIP children, as the post described them. Here in the states, you might call them Nepo babies, but these were children of very powerful people.

Malaysia was outraged the idea that a girl from an impoverished background might find her possible murder covered up if the right people were connected to it. The specific allegations centered partly on the wife of Dato Mustafa Sokhmud, the then Deputy Minister of Higher Education. His wife, Rosni Nasir, had previously served as the principal of SMCA. Deputy Minister stepped forward publicly to deny any involvement, emphasizing that his wife had retired from the school's principal position in November of 2024. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run club era.

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Protests broke out across the country. Crowds gathered at night markets in public squares, holding posters and demanding justice for a 13-year-old girl most of them had never met. How we didn't learn about Zara's case until we were both in Kuala Lumpur, and I saw a justice for Zara bumper sticker on a car and I pointed out to Yergi. It was clear that the people of Malaysia were largely united against what was a clear injustice. And Zara's death was now beginning to get international attention. On August 3, 2025, Narada filed another police report.

This time, she was not reporting what she had heard. She was reporting what she had seen. While preparing her daughter's body for burial, Narita had noticed bruises on Zara's body. Bruises that she felt could not be explained solely by the fall. Her lawyers called for Zara's body to be exhumed so that a proper examination could be finally conducted. Five days later, on August 8, 2025, the Attorney General of Malaysia approved the order.

The exhumation took place the following day and the cemetery was tightly secured by the police. Journalists gathered at a distance while members of the public crowded the perimeter. Zara's 83-year-old grandfather has seemed to a hope that the exhumation of her grave would proceed smoothly. The last time he'd seen Zara was during her birthday celebration the year prior, he said. That meeting became my last memory with her. My hope is that this process will be eased and all evidence can assist in the investigation so that she can receive justice. Zara's body had been transported to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the same hospital where she was treated on July 16th. Her autopsy was conducted on August 10th by four pathologists observed by the family's lawyer and three police officers.

The process took eight hours. To understand what the pathologists we're dealing with, you have to know something about the climate of Malaysia, as well as Islamic burial practices, which emphasize dignity, simplicity, and swiftness, usually occurring within 24 hours of death. The deceased is typically buried without a coffin. Malaysia has a hot, humid equatorial climate year-round with temperatures averaging 77 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit with horrible humidity. Zah would have been dead for three weeks before her body was exhumed and very likely in an advanced state of decomposition. We're not saying this to be grotesque. We're saying it to make clear just how badly this case was handled. When the family's legal representative emerged, she confirmed what Narita had suspected. There were fractures. There were injuries.

And the full findings would take time to process. Zar was then reburied at the same site. On August 13th, 2025, the Attorney General's chambers announced that a formal inquest would be held into Zara's death conducted by the coroner's court in Kota Kanabalu. It began on September 3rd and was scheduled to run through the 30th. The presiding coroner was Amir Shah Mir Hassan, a Sessions court judge who took over after his predecessor, as Rina Aziz, recused herself, citing her address in Papar, which is the same town as Zara's school. Both of Zara's parents were granted interested party status, meaning they were permitted to participate in the proceedings and were represented by their respective legal teams. Five teenagers who had been charged with bullying Zara were also granted interested party status. By the time of the inquest, at least 68 witnesses, including 35 children, were called to testify.

Senior students at SMCA had established a high council. Under this practice, senior students would summon juniors and reprimand them. for perceived infractions, such as not smiling when passing by, dress code violations, were their overall attitude. It was, in effect, an unofficial discipline system running parallel to the school's official one. Some might consider this to be hazing, but apparently not school officials. The court heard it was possible that Zara had been summoned to one of these sessions on the night before she was found.

Waded mannequins had been used in reconstructions of the events that night, seen theories about how Zara had come to fall from the third floor. One theory that went viral from an English teacher on TikTok alleged that Zara had died by being placed inside a washing machine. The reconstruction using a weighted mannequin and the actual machines at the school demonstrated this was physically impossible. The teacher, 39-year-old C.T. Hajar Afla Sharudin, was subsequently charged with spreading false information to cause public alarm.

She pled not guilty, but we weren't able to find any information. about sentencing. Forensic pathologist Jesse Hugh from Queen Elizabeth Hospital gave evidence to the inquest that carried significant weight. She testified that it was unlikely that Zara's death had been caused by an accidental fall, and equally unlikely that it resulted from being pushed from a standing position. This is a very important piece of information because if neither an accidental fall nor being pushed could fully account for Zara's injuries, then exactly what happened to Zara. toxicology results also added a layer of complexity. The hospital's chemistry department found no drugs in Zara's liver. However, the coroner's court was informed that the laboratory tests had

detected the presence of Fennitoin. This is an anti-seizure medication, and it was in Zara's kidney tissue. No explanation for the presence of this drug has been established. She had no known history of taking it. You might conclude that Zara was drugged, and while it's possible, it would be a very interesting choice for the person drugging them. Usually motivations for drugging someone involve either killing them outright or to get them in a state to attempt to control them. An OD on Fennitoin is rarely fatal, especially orally. She would have had to take a handful of them or be injected, but access to an injectable version of is less likely, not impossible, but less likely. If she was injected to be controlled, while the toxicity symptoms don't really achieve that goal as it's

not a very sedating drug. Yes, you can become unsteady on your feet and sleepy, but not everyone experiences those symptoms when taking too much fennitoin. It certainly could have just been a case of another child maliciously using what was available to them without much forethought. But unfortunately, beyond speculation, we will likely never know exactly how it got in Zara's system or why. On August 20th, five teenage girls appeared before Judge Elsie Primus at the Codagh. Kinabalo Children's Court. All five were minors and their identities were protected under

Malaysia's Child Act of 2001 by a gag order imposed on all parties. Each was charged under Section 507C1 of the Malaysian Penal Code with making threatening or insulting communications towards Zara, a offense that carries a penalty of up to one year in prison, a fine or both. All five pled not guilty. They were each released on a bail of 5,000 Malaysian. ring it. The Attorney General's office was careful to note that these charges related specifically to bullying and were not linked to Zara's death, which remained the subject of a separate ongoing investigation. Legally, that distinction mattered. To the public, it wasn't enough. Zara's case reached Malaysia's highest offices. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim spoke publicly,

guaranteeing that the investigation would be conducted transparently and fairly and further promising that no one, no matter who they were, would escape punishment if they were found to have been involved in Zara's death. He consulted directly with the Inspector General of Police and the Home Minister to expedite the investigation. He also acknowledged the initial failures by police needing to be investigated. The Ministry of Education urged the public not to gather in front of Zara's school or to boycott it, acknowledging how angry the general public was over the handling of Zara's case. Associate Professor Dr. Ahmad of the University Malaysia Sabah told the new straits times that perceived lapses in the case, particularly the failure to conduct an initial autopsy, had already seriously eroded public confidence in both the police and the government.

He warned that if the government didn't handle this convincingly, it would pay a political price. And this wasn't an emotional take because the general public sentiment was that, that maybe the systems of law and accountability in Malaysia weren't capable of working for poor, rural people, especially when somebody powerful and connected was involved. Zara's case brought to light bullying that took place in Malaysian schools, and specifically about boarding schools where students spent every day and night in a closed environment with people who may not have their best interests at heart. A child who is bullied at a residential school has nowhere to go at the end of the day.

Essentially, the school becomes a prison. The public outcry wasn't just about seeking justice for Tsar's death. It was about demanding reform to call for better monitoring systems and boarding schools and ensuring that students have safe channels to report harassment and that those channels will actually work for them. As of the date of this recording, the full circumstances of Zara's death have never been conclusively established. The forensic pathologist testimony that her manner of death was inconceive,

with an accidental fall or a simple push from a standing position ruled out the simple explanations and left the harder ones unanswered. The presence of an anti-seizure drug in Zara's kidney tissue had not been explained. The failure to conduct the initial autopsy meant that evidence that might have been obtained in those critical early hours was lost. The failure to preserve Zara's clothing meant that potential forensic material was gone. Sixty-eight witnesses had been called to testify. Manican reconstructions had been conducted. A body had been exhumed and re-examined. And still, the question of exactly what happened at three in the morning on July 16, 2025, on the third floor of the girl's dorm, has not been definitively answered. In the end,

whatever the courts ultimately decide, the outlines of her story are not in dispute. She was a 13-year-old girl from a small village on the coast of Saba. She was someone's daughter. She cooked Rodi Tolor for her family before she went back to school for what would be the last time. She filed a complaint in her first month of school and, it seems, received little in the way of lasting protection. She told her mother in a recording that the world would later hear that she had been threatened by another student. She was, by every account, a girl who was struggling in her new environment. Malaysia does not know yet the full truth of what happened to Zara, but Malaysia has not forgotten her. She is buried in the soil of her village in the land she grew up in, and a question hangs in the air,

one that is on the minds of many people, not just across Malaysia, but across the entire world. Will justice for Zara ever be served? So after recording, we got a very important update in Zara's case that came on April 3rd, 26. So forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Chua Z. Hung, told the coroner's court that the circumstances surrounding Zara's death were more consistent with the S word, if you will, that third option we hadn't discussed in the episode. So in his testimony, Dr. Chua, who works for hospital,

Messra Bukit Padang was reported to state that Zara displayed a more dominant risks for harm than protective factors at the time of the incidents. Dr. Schwaugh prepared an 84-page psychiatric report dated February 2nd for the court, focusing on the likelihood of these risk factors and the circumstances relating to Zara's death. I'm sorry we have to phrase it this way. As you know, if you've watched this channel for a while, YouTube does. is not like that S word or anything related to violence towards oneself. This makes it very frustrating trying to raise awareness about things like this. So among the materials and documents were reviewed were Zara's diary, the location of the incident, the autopsy report by consulting with Dr. Jesse Hugh, who was the original pathologist that did that autopsy after she was exhumed.

counseling reports a visit to Zara's dormitory in interviews with family members and the staff at SMCA, the school that she was going to. The information indicated emotional disturbances, extreme anger, behavior to where she was in danger to herself, unstable interpersonal relationships, as we talked about, she really wasn't making friends there and a fear of being abandoned. And Dr. Chois was also reported as saying that these materials thus far are insufficient to make a retrospective diagnosis of a personality disorder. And the inquest itself is scheduled to resume from April 13th of this year to the 17th. And we'll definitely keep an eye out for updates as they become available to us. And it should be clear that they are not disputing the fact that Tsar was bullied. Right.

That is not something they're trying to dispute. What they are trying to say is that this was of Zara's own doing. Now if you... She was bullied to death in that way. Now this is very new, so I haven't seen much in the way of Malay media or what people have said on social media. The very little bits I've seen is that some people don't believe this or the people that do believe this to think that, well, these children should still be held accountable because if Zara did this to herself, it was certainly motivated by the fact that she was being bullied. Now, Zara's mother, Narita, she is closely following the proceedings to ensure that the truth is

determined by the court. And her lawyers sought to call in their own psychiatric experts to review the forensic reports that are determining that this was more of a jump and not a fall. A number of other witnesses, including character witnesses, familiar with Zara, have yet to testify. So that is something that is going to be happening as the inquest continues. But it does make you wonder, I mean, obviously I don't want to speculate, but there was the question of where the Fennitoin came from. I don't know if they're ever going to figure that out, considering the state of decomposition she was in when they exhumed her.

I'm not exactly sure if we said this in the video, but not only did she say she wasn't thrown off or she didn't fall from a standing position, she wasn't pushed. She also said that there was no foul play. And I think that is a hard thing to concretely rule on when you have the state of decomposition to be that bad when you do the autopsy. What's frustrating is because they screwed this whole thing up, waited so long for an autopsy. We're just never really going to truly know. There's always going to be that question.

Yes. And this is what happens when there's. bad investigative work, you end up in a situation where you might arrive at the right decision, but there's always that asterisk. There's always that what if. And at the end of the day, that hurts the families. Because in the back of their head, they're wondering, did we get it right? And if this is the truth, if Zara did this herself, she was still bullied.

And that is a very important aspect. talk about what goes on in these schools and how children are treated. You know, they had their own form of the student body punished their own. They had these weird hazing rituals. Some people will look at this, well, there's no, she did it herself. Okay, there's going to be no criminal charges. I don't think that should be the narrative here. Right.

And above all, like a 13-year-old girl should feel safe to be an aborting school. 100%. somebody else.