Thirteen-year-old Lainey Emerson is the middle child in a home police are already familiar with: her mom works too much and her stepfather favors his own blood over another man’s problems—namely Lainey and her wild older sister. More

A small, portly man in a white suit, deep purple shirt, and patent slip-ons ran around the stage with a microphone in hand, reaching out to touch any one of the hundreds of sweaty palms that waved back and forth before him in the Unity Tree of Everlasting Evangelical Life church auditorium. More