Then there’s the case of the German who held his daughter captive for 24 years, and impregnated her with six children(!). What is appalling is how evil the human mind can become.
From the link in post #2: “Authorities arrested three brothers, ages 50 to 54. One of them, former school bus driver Ariel Castro, owned the home…”
Come on, it’s not very sensitive, but I think there’s room for a discussion of the OP’s point without shouting him down for victim blaming.
I think about how a house is unlike a prison. I’ve had dogs that have chewed through interior walls to get at each other. There’s not much to a house - especially if it’s got vinyl siding.
Three adult males were arrested in connection with the crime. Ariel Castro and his two brothers.
I could easily seal up the basement of my house so that no one could readily escape. People can be chained drugged, threathened. We don’t know what else went on in that house. We’ll find out eventually.
It’s quite amazing to me that apparently all you need to do to make the police give up is not answer the door.
I find it pretty hard to get into your lack of understanding. It’s pretty easy to get a mother to not do things, much more so than a dog. Hey, bitch, touch that wall/door/window and I’ll rape your daughter to death.
… That was easy.
I think there’s also the threat of what might happen to the others if only one was able to escape. I can easily see how such a group might develop an “all or nothing” attitude. If the young women were relying on each other for emotional support, imagine how awful it would be if one escaped and the remaining prisoners were punished. Add a small child into the mix, and it becomes even more complicated to risk only some of the group escaping.
Of course, I can also see how having a child could make a person MORE determined to escape, but I think for many, it also makes any plan need to be more deliberate. One person might think “I’ll escape or I’ll die trying” but then there’s also the consideration “but if I die trying, what will happen to the baby?”
Elizabeth Smart recently made some comments in a public presentation that might shed some light on the mindset of an abused captive, especially a girl that age (I think the youngest girl in the Cleveland case was the same age as Elizabeth Smart): Elizabeth Smart speaks on human trafficking - CSMonitor.com
Ah, thanks. I guess I missed that.
This. I am cringing as this story is emerging. There are limits to how much good a person is willing to do in their lifetime, but there seems to be no limit at all to how much evil one can do.
It’s not that surprising, depending on the initial report. They aren’t going to do much about a report of something that is not on it’s face a crime when it appears no one is home. Still would have been worth a followup though.
I think about how easy it would to make part of a house quite effective as a prison. A room paneled with 3/4" plywood isn’t going to breachable. A stone-walled basement doesn’t lend itself to breaking through, either.
Precious few humans seem able to do that, however. Especially quickly enough to break through before the damage is seen by the captors.
If escape had been as physically easy as you seem to suppose, we wouldn’t be having this thread as the captives would have long ago fled.
I know.
I just read a lot of Crime Library and the narratives are filled with incidents of police being called to a serial killers’ home and nobody answering the door so they just left.
Granted, I’m certain the police respond to thousands of mundane, usually petty complaints by neighbors or whoever and the odds of them discovering a hidden den of horrors is virtually nil, but it’s just disturbing to think about when you read about it.
I agree Delphica. Especially in the case of the two women who were kidnapped around the same time. They basically grew up together. I can’t imagine one trying to break free without worrying about the other. You’re also right about throwing a child into the mix.
The impetus for some of these responses is similar to what happens with why urban legends are so popular. It’s that air that you’re too smart for something like this to befall you. If you were battered, you’d leave. If your boss was abusive, you’d quit. It’s armchair quarterbacking to make one’s self feel better.
None of those adult male captives are being held in secret. (Okay, well, practically none.) It’s not that you can’t build a handy-dandy human cage that said human can’t get out of with bare hands or simple tools - of course you can. But unless your title is Warden of San Quentin, the first outside human who knows anything about your situation is going to blow the whistle, which will breach your high security setup.
What’s astounding here is (1) that it took ten years for one of the women to find a chink in the armor and get a message out, but even more (2) that no one in ten years ever even suspected that there were captives in the house.
I think what a lot of people forget in the internet age, when we all have instant access to information, is that these women weren’t just constrained physically. All of their information about what was going on outside the house would probably have been controlled by their captors as well. They might not know what city or state or county they are in. Heck, for all they know the world is in the middle of a nuclear war and they are lucky to be safe.
I think we would all pause before trying to escape a situation where we had no idea what was waiting on the other side of the door. It would take some serious bravery to step outside after 10 years and trust the first person you see.
Reminds me of a creepy sight I saw when house-hunting - one place we saw at an open house had a bedroom set up in the (otherwise unfinished) basement, two piece ensuite bathroom, with a pretty solid door and a hasp for a lock on the outside.
My wife and I just looked at each other like this: :eek: … but surely in that case, there was a wholly innocent explaination.
[No, we didn’t put an offer in]
It’s always a problem. We wonder why law enforcement can’t connect the dots, but in fact they have thousands of dots and only a few connect.
True, and probably one reason this doesn’t happen more often. But the OP’s issue was not that they weren’t discovered and rescued, but that they didn’t escape.
Agreed. One has to assume that the captors were diligent in keeping the situation under wraps.
I’m willing to bet that these monsters told the girls that they knew where they lived and if they escaped their families would be killed. Or some such bullshit.
I’m also willing to bet that when these monsters are interviewed, they will talk about how nicely their “girlfriends” were taken care of and how they did not want to leave.
Read the tale of Colleen Stan who was kept a sex slave for seven years.