In 1932, at the age of 12, my maternal grandmother, a talented young singer, was a victim of sexual abuse. By the time she was 15, she was performing in a Minneapolis nightclub to earn money to help her family survive. It was the Depression, and she was the youngest daughter of a widowed mother, a Norwegian immigrant seamstress.

She’d also had contact with the local police, not as a victim of sexual abuse but as a “delinquent.” According to documents I reviewed in the course of conducting research for a book about my family’s history, by ninth grade she’d come to the attention of the county for skipping school, staying out past curfew and sometimes failing to come home.

If any professionals considered the possibility that the behavior changes may have been the result of trauma, they failed to record it. Instead, the court system focused on minor “status offenses” like truancy and curfew violations. Then, at 15, according to her court records, my young grandmother was impregnated by a 35-year-old nightclub manager. Deemed “incorrigible” by the court, she was committed to a girl’s juvenile detention facility — Minnesota Home School for Girls, in Sauk Centre, Minn., where she was to remain until age 21.

According to the yearly report filed by the detention facility to the Minnesota Board of Control, in 1935 my grandmother was one of 101 new inmates, ages 9 to 19. Of those 101 girls, 88 were committed for “immorality,” an offense that didn’t exist for boys. Four, including my grandmother, were committed for incorrigibility, and two for vagrancy. Only three were committed for crimes against properties or persons. All of them were sentenced to be detained until the age of 21. Among those girls, a few, like my grandmother, were pregnant.