Some of you may remember Elizabeth Smart, the Salt Lake City girl who was kidnapped from her bedroom about a year ago. Many months later, after everyone assumed she was dead, she was found alive, and returned to her family.
Turns out the kidnapper was a crazed religious zealot who believed that God had ordered him to have multiple wives. Unfortunately, due to the paucity of quality singles bars in the Salt Lake City area, and his own limited social skills, he apparently decided that the best way to meet eligible women was to kidnap them as 14 year old girls and then raise them to suit his own taste.
Anyway, yesterday MSNBC posted a transcript of Katie Couric's interview with the Smart family and young Elizabeth. Skip over the ho-hum discussion with her parents, and check out the child's description of her captivity. Turns out the kidnapper gave her a new family name, held her in physical restraints, constantly told her she was worthless trash, etc. After a few months, even though she was being held only a few miles from her family home, and she had numerous opportunities to escape, she was too scared to run or even speak up to passersby who could have alerted the authorities.
See
http://www.msnbc.com/news/984676.aspObviously, this situation did not involve a so-called teen help program. However, Elizabeth's description of what her kidnappers did will sound remarkably familiar to readers of this forum.
If the victim of an obvious criminal act can be turned around in a few months of isolation from her family, how much more "effectively" will the child be re-programmed when the isolation, restraints, and humiliations are endorsed by and paid-for by the kid's own family, as the only alternative to jail or the cemetary?
[ This Message was edited by: scottT on 2003-10-26 05:15 ]
