Media Fury

As I sit watching the evening news, I rejoice with many others around the country knowing three young ladies are now reunited with their families after being held captive for 10 years.  I remember having the same joyous feelings each time I have seen this type of rescue/reunion play out in the media. 

Of course, I have an absolute desire to see anyone living in captivity be freed.  There is no bigger picture of freedom for me than those which come when someone is no longer bound by an abuser. 

As it always happens, the media doesn't stay in the joy of the moment.  They immediately go to the graphic details and the hardcore questions. 

The graphic nature of what they report is so difficult to see and hear.  As someone who has been abused, hearing about a young girl being held captive and raped in a dark basement send chills down my spine.  Sometimes, I think the media coverage gets a bit too in depth.  Why?  Is it that necessary for the general population to know each mortifying detail?

Then the questions and theorizing....

This is where I tend to get furious!  With all of these cases over the past 10 years, I know you've heard it.  You may have even asked it. 

Why didn't they try to get away sooner?

Oh my word!  I tell you this question in any form makes my blood boil.  Anyone that lets this question enter their thinking or slip from their mouth obviously shares the ignorance of the media.  (I use the term ignorance as a description of not knowing.)  Anyone who wonders this has no clue what it is like to be held captive.

Granted, I was not abducted by a stranger and held against my will.   No, I was held captive in my own home and abused by parents and others.  Yes, I was locked in a basement for hours, days, and weeks at a time.  I was bound in the house and garage, not allowed to move for days at a time.  Different and yet much the same.

Frankly, I wish I could say this to each person I hear asking this question.  Let me break this down for anyone who wonders the same thing.

Do not ever under estimate the power an abuser or abductor has over their victim.  I NEVER believed in brain-washing until I realized that I had been.  The perpetrator knows what they are doing before they ever do it.  There is an evil that courses through their veins and is far beyond what we can understand.  What they do and say is often calculated. 

They use fear and dependence to their advantage.  When you are left in a dark basement for a week or tied to a garage door for days, (especially as a child) you are 100% dependant on the person who put you there.  You depend on them for your basic needs.  You learn what that person expects from you and are driven by fear to fully comply. 

While it might be hard to believe, it is true.  That very real control the person has over you is easily the reason why my abuse lasted long into my adult life. 

You live in this warped, altered world where you begin to live with the worst as if it is the best.  That dependency can even give you a sense of security.  While living through the abuse, it becomes the normal and everything outside of that becomes the abnormal.  You know what to expect in that dark basement and begin to look forward to contact, even though it is horrific abuse.  You begin to see the abuser as more of a savior than the devil.  To disobey, leave, run, or buck the system in anyway at all would leave you completely exposed to the unknown.  Please know this isn't immediate, but develops in long-term situations. 

It is true that the dependency can severely warp how you feel about the abuser.  I haven't lived with my parents for 20 years and I have spent the last 6 years in fairly consistent counseling.  I know my parents are terrible.  I have written many things in this blog that clearly outline their evil ways.  I have accepted that all they have done is wrong.  However, I still get a little bristly when I hear someone else comment about my parents. 

I haven't ever shared that with anyone because I often need the reminder from people I consider healthy influences in my life.  I need to hear them say what kind of person my dad is so that I do not forget.  I need to be reminded that what I lived through was not normal.  But still today, I tend to get a little defensive (only internally) when I hear it. 

With all that said, I do believe these cases you see in the media are a bit tainted by misinformation.  In all likelihood, these people are escaping when they truly believe they can get away.  The right time, the right moment. 

I believed I took that step when I was 18.  I moved all my things while my parents were at work and did not tell anyone for weeks where I was living.  The circumstances were a little different for me.  I didn't have a loving family to run home to, instead I had an evil one I was running away from.  One that followed me for a long, long time. 

Like I said, it was similar but different.  If this is something you hear or even think while watching media coverage of the young ladies rescued this week, I really do hope you'll consider what I have shared.  I hope if you hear this kind of thing from family members or around the water cooler, you'll help educate them.