Why kidnap victims and battered women may be to slow to escape

IN JANUARY, THE SEARCH for a missing 13-year-old boy, Ben Ownby, led police to the home of his suspected kidnapper, Michael Devlin. There they found not one, but two, kidnap victims. Shawn Hornbeck had been abducted while riding his bicycle four years before. The 15-year-old Hornbeck was well-known to neighbors and friends. The story, as flashed out over the TV networks, left Americans stunned. Here was a boy who had surfed the Internet, owned a cell phone, ridden a bike, and even called the police to report that an earlier bicycle had been stolen. Here was a boy who had helped in the capture of a second, younger boy. Here was a kidnap victim who had every opportunity to escape, but failed to do so.

Some people's minds had flashbacks to the 1970s when former kidnap victim Patty Hearst was found by police engaging in robberies with the gang that had abducted her. On his Fox News Channel show, "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly did not mince his words: "I'm not buying this. If you're 11 years old or 12 years old, 13, and you have a strong bond with your family, Okay, even if the guy threatens you, this and that, you're tiding your bike around, you got friends. The kid didn't go to school. There's all kinds of stuff. If you can get away, you get away. All right?.... This is what I believe happened in the Hearst case and in this case. The situation that Hearst found herself in was exciting. She had a boring life. She was a child of privilege. All of a sudden, she's in with a bunch of charismatic thugs, and she enjoyed it. The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted."

There was a reason Devlin afforded his young captive such freedom: his conditioning of the boy had been successful. It was because the youngster he took care of was different from the one whom he had captured and tortured (psychologically and possibly physically) four years earlier. Hornbeck probably had proved his loyalty to Devlin in many ways. Devlin's techniques may not have been aimed deliberately at indoctrination, but they most certainly were designed to break down any resistance. The strategies he used would have been relatively the same as those employed by the government to accomplish the same thing.

The government, as O'Reilly should know, uses advanced techniques to get noncitizen detainees captured in the war on terror to "crack." According to reports on these methods, the most efficient technique is to break down the suspect's defenses through a combination of physical discomfort and psychological deprivation (of light or dark, regular meals, sleep, comfortable sitting positions). The good-cop, bad-cop strategy also is utilized so that the detainee will confide in the supposed ally. Once the person talks a little, he or she is told, "You're mined now with your people, so you might as well tell all and let us help you." Loners usually take longer to break down.

These methods bear some resemblance to those of brainwashing, although brainwashing is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. This term first was coined as a description of political indoctrination of captured American soldiers by the Chinese communists during the Korean War. "Brainwashing" is a translation from Chinese characters meaning "wash heart" or thought reform. Captured soldiers were subjected to prolonged interrogations, removal of group leaders, and a "good-cop, bad-cop" approach. Some Americans became so convinced of the Communist party line that they defected to China. Those who criticize kidnap victims for their seemingly passive behavior should check out psychological research related to victimology. The classic study in this regard is that of Bruno Bettelheim, who described in haunting detail the transition in behavior of concentration camp inmates. Instead of anger, many prisoners came to identify with the SS troops who were torturing them, regressed to a childlike state, and tried to emulate the prison guards. They were extremely grateful for small, often imagined favors. Over time, some rejected their families and friends who seemed to have abandoned them; their only reality was life in the camp.

For kidnap victims such as Hearst and Elizabeth Smart, both of whom were beaten and raped while held captive for months, the process of adaptation to the mistreatment imposed upon them was relatively similar to that of Hornbeck. Both victims ended up conforming to the lifestyle of their captors. Hearst went so far as to take on the identity of Tania and to rob banks with her former captors. Yet, like most of the Communist converts, Hearst and Smart resumed their original identities upon their return to society.

These incidents bring to mind the case of Steven Stayner of California, a youth who was snatched in 1972 at age seven and held by a convicted child molester for eight horrifying years. Although Stayner went to school during this period, he escaped only after his captor told him he was getting too old and kidnapped a five-year-old boy to replace him. Motivated by the boy's distress, Stayner escaped with him and brought him to the police.