Annie Nichol: My name is Annie Nichol,
and I'm a writer and an advocate
for survivor–centered justice and healing in public policy.
If you were aware of the news in the 1990s,
chances are, you remember the name of my sister, Polly Klaas.
I was six when a stranger broke into our house
and abducted Polly from our bedroom.
She was 12.
And over the next two months,
there was a nationwide search for her.
The story around her kidnapping became a national spectacle.
News crews were camped out on our doorstep for weeks on end.
And her name was just constantly in the headlines
and being mentioned on news programs every night.
Tragically, the investigation ended with the discovery of her death.
Her killer was caught and convicted,
but that was really only the beginning of the sensationalism.
As I got older, I started realizing
there were strange ways people were telling my sister's story,
in ways that made her kind of unrecognizable to me.