In the movie Monsoon Wedding, Lalit Verma discovers that one of his best friends and supporters has sexually abused his older daughter and now also the younger one.
After a confrontation that is getting ugly, Lalit Verma stops the escalation with this brilliant line:
"These are my children, and I would protect them from myself even if I had to."
The fact that he sees that it could be himself (under different circumstances) that his children needed protection from, creates the respect needed for this friend to back away without denying the gravity of the situation.