Readers were told that Leo’s Armenian mother, Ruzan Badalyan, and her family had abandoned him at birth and Forrest was no longer welcome in their home because he wanted to keep his son. Donors were asked to contribute money so Forrest could return and raise Leo in New Zealand, where he would be better accepted and have a higher quality of life. But amidst the wall-to-wall media coverage, pictures of Forrest and Leo, and updates on the generosity of people in many different countries, there was one glaring omission: Badalyan herself.

When I was a young lawyer researching a case in the law library, I overheard two lawyers discussing strategies for a rape trial. The lawyer defending the accused said that his client wanted to use alibi evidence as his defence, and argue that he had been in a different town at the time. The lawyer told his colleague that he had advised his client to use a defence of consent. The shocking thing about this conversation is that those defences are utterly incompatible.