For kidnap victims, recovery can be rare

For kidnap victims, recovery can be rare
With few cases to guide them, mental health experts find it hard to fathom how victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard can put the pieces back together and live some semblance of a normal existence.

By Karen Kaplan, Thomas H. Maugh II and Shari Roan
LA Times

August 29, 2009

For kidnap victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard, recovery is rare. A full portion of her life -- her entire teens and 20s -- was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them. They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now. Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children. Despite extensive rehabilitation, media reports indicate she is not doing well.

(snip)

In Europe, kidnap victims are placed in residential treatment centers to give them time to adjust to their changed circumstances, but there are no equivalents in the United States, said Katherine van Wormer of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, who has studied the behavior of kidnapping victims. Both Kampusch and Fritzl were treated in such facilities. A key issue for Dugard, now 29, will be how she re-establishes her relationship with her mother, Terry Probyn, who lives in Riverside County. Mother and daughter should resist the urge to try to pick up their lives as left off in June 1991, when Dugard was abducted in her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood as she walked to a bus stop. Dugard "needs to be in intensive therapy and slowly come back so that her emotional feelings can be transferred back to her mother," van Wormer said. And though it may seem cathartic to recount 18 years' worth of horrific details, this might make matters worse.

You especially don't want to discuss details of the ordeal in public. The parents of Shawn Hornbeck were roundly criticized when they appeared with their 15-year-old son on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2007, less than a week after he was rescued from the suburban St. Louis apartment of kidnapper Michael Devlin. The 11-year-old had been bicycling near his Richwoods, Mo., home when Devlin snatched him. Hornbeck's parents told the national TV audience that their son suffered sexual abuse during his 4 1/2 years of captivity. Media critics and mental health experts were appalled.

Therapy is not just for the victim. Probyn may also need counseling to help her deal with feelings of abandonment and adjust to the fact that her daughter is no longer a little girl, experts said. She may struggle with things Dugard might say that seem infuriating, such as expressing sympathy or affection for her captors. Such feelings are not uncommon among those who have been kidnapped: Kampusch, whose captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide after her escape, mourned his death and purchased the house in which she was held for those 8 1/2 years. Carl Probyn, Dugard's stepfather, said his wife told him that Dugard "feels guilty about bonding with" Garrido. (The Probyns are separated.)

(snip)

Ed Smart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was abducted in June 2002 from her Salt Lake City bedroom and held for nine months by a pair of drifters, said the family saw a psychiatrist for some time. But they did not ask her to relive or explain the experience to them. She was encouraged to return to activities she had enjoyed before the abduction and has focused on not dwelling on what happened. Smart said the biggest hurdle is helping the victim know she has nothing to feel guilty about. Society, he said, may ask: "Why didn't you run away?" "But this is not her fault," he said.

Dugard's two daughters, 11 and 15, will certainly complicate their mother's recovery. They "are constant traumatic reminders," McCracken said. "At every moment, they would tend to evoke memories, feelings, even flashbacks of the traumatic experience." But the girls may have helped her cope with captivity, and the relationships she has with them could now make it easier for her to form attachments with others, van Wormer said. "It's better that she had the children," she said. "She wasn't alone."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-me-kidnapped-treatment30-2009aug30,0,3861621,print.story

Some of the most abusive 5 words anyone can utter.

but this is something that most of us think. More, we think of the wives, partners of these monsters who know and acquiesce. And we also hear about girls being abused by their fathers or step fathers or boy friends with the mothers pretend not to know.

And I have to wonder why can't we send a stronger message to these wives and mothers that they don't have to stay in these relations, that they should be able to stand up to these abusers, grab the girls and run for the nearest shelter.

telling them to act like human fucking beings?

first grade, boys should be taught again and again that when a woman says "no," she means it, and to accept it like a man and to leave her alone. And that the women in their lives are not to be used as punching bags when things go bad at work, or with the poker game, etc.

There were interesting comments here, not necessarily all in agreement.

:banghead:

but when you punch the woman in your life because things are bed at work; when you violate a restraining order; when you declare that if you cannot have her, no one else should and break into her home and kill her; when you dress like Santa on Christmas Day and burst into the home of her family and start killing indiscriminately - you really have no excuses.

...any more than anyone here is "The America-Haters." :nuke:

You can stick your collective-guilt-trip where the sun don't shine.

one of my cousins was molested by her dad for 9 years. In all honesty, I don't think my aunt knew anything. Uncle and aunt worked opposite shifts. All auntie knew is that my cousin was a pain in the ass to raise. Cousin grew up to be promiscuous teenager. Auntie was shamed her little brat grew up to be a slut and made no bones about it.

It took a decade of therapy before my cousin was able to even think about trying to be in any sort of relationship with a man and another decade before she trusted one enough to get married. It was remarkable. Many woman just can't even try. About 3 years after she married they got into a big damn fight about something and he called her a fucking whore.

She ran off and it took us 4 months to find her. We were lucky in that the idiotic dumbass husband actually did love her despite being a dumbass and had good mental health insurance. It took 4 years before she was willing to even leave the mental hospital on a day trip. THAT was 10 years ago and she still is not doing well. He has stayed married to her on paper, I think mostly out of a feeling of responsibility for her breakdown.

A few words spoken without thinking can destroy a person who's already fragile.

so there is no one who would wonder what is wrong with "little Suzy" and to try to get her to professionals to find out.

Certainly physical check up should reveal signs of worry, even a refusal to let anyone touch her.

I know that OGBYN are trained to find signs of abuse; I think that pediatricians are, too. Perhaps even the school nurse.

If they are not, they should.

...is that many men who abuse (sexually and/or physically) pick wives and girlfriends who are vulnerable
and in crisis themselves.

Usually these women suffer from unresolved PTSD. They can't help or protect themselves, so they live
their lives helpless to stand up for themselves or for their children.

Yes, it is awful that these women do not and cannot protect their children. They are culpable, but they
are not the cause. These abusers orchestrate the entire scenario. They DO KNOW what they are doing.

I was abused as a child and our family dynamic was a vortex of dysfunction. My mother had been
sexually abused as child (by her father) and had never healed. My father was a psychopath. He took advantage of
my mother at every turn and weakened her. My father took up the role of abuser in my mother's life--where
her father had left off. My mother was like a stunted child--unable to find the strength or power to
untangle herself from a abuse/victim cycle.

She couldn't help herself. She wasn't capable of helping us.

abused children and take them away. Yes, I know. Our schools are overwhelmed and are short of funds but we need to be able to identify children who exhibit some symptoms of abuse.

I am not a psychologist or a social worker, but I think that after the fact, adults who were close to a child realize in hindsight that something was wrong.

I admire you for being able to talk about it and to look at your family from the safe distance of adulthood. It appears that you have found a way to escape that vicious cycle and I hope that you have found loving friends whom you trust.

Reading your story makes me believe that there are hope, somehow, someway.

I admire your strength. It could not have been easy getting to where you are now and I wish you all the love and trust that you deserve.

Thank you for your kind words. I have found peace and resolution and have a wonderful life with
my husband, two beautiful daughters and lots of friends. It took many years of therapy, and probably
a lot of luck--but I feel that I have come full circle. Thank you for such kind, amazing words. :)

Being a survivor of abuse--I can often spot warning signs of abuse. This is often a blessing and a curse,
because I find myself noticing things that most people don't. There was a little girl in my child's
kindergarten class who was hitting and biting a few specific kids--then being incredibly nice to them and
gaining their trust--then she would hurt them again. I recognized this as a possible sign that she was
being abused. She seemed to have these kids in an abuse cycle. I sensed she was acting out. I voiced
my concern to the principal (this child had been biting my child), and I told him I was concerned about
my child but also the behavior I saw in this child. He was completely oblivious--and this was the principal.

A couple of months later, this child was removed from her home due to abuse. She's been adopted by her foster
family and lives in another school district.

I think society is in deep denial about abuse. This makes it difficult for children to be helped. When people
ignore obvious signs (or even more subtle signs) they are really ignoring cries for help. This only aids the
abusers--who will often tell victims that no one will believe them.

I hope we can improve as a society--helping children and also helping survivors feel supported and safe enough
to heal.

Thanks so much for your kind words--which are so comforting and healing. :)

I was wondering who, if anyone, had the expertise to help Jaycee and her two children... Or guide their recovery.

I wish everyone who tries to help the best.

She was kidnapped in her home in 1974 when she was a college student by the Symbonese Liberation Army (SLA), which was a radical spin-off group, hoping for revolution. She was left tied and blindfolded in a small closet where she was raped by two of the male members several times. She "joined" the SLA in a classic Stockholm Syndrome scenario, particularly because they had her believe that the FBI was going to kill her in a fascade of "rescuing" her and her only chance at living was to join the group.

When she was actually rescued, she wasn't killed and gave a "power to the People" gesture to the reporters as she was driven away. She remained "Tanya" for many months until she felt it was safe to return to being "Patty Hearst" but she never really returned to her former lifestyle. She married and had children and has a respectable life at this time, but that kind of trauma is internalized indefinitely.

and I don't know whether at that time we were already talking about the "Stockholm syndrome."

She was kidnapped in her home in 1974 when she was a college student by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), which was a radical spin-off group, hoping for revolution. She was left tied and blindfolded in a small closet where she was raped by two of the male members several times. She "joined" the SLA in a classic Stockholm Syndrome scenario, particularly because they had her believe that the FBI was going to kill her in a fascade of "rescuing" her and her only chance at living was to join the group.

When she was actually rescued, she wasn't killed and gave a "power to the People" gesture to the reporters as she was driven away. She remained "Tanya" for many months until she felt it was safe to return to being "Patty Hearst" but she never really returned to her former lifestyle. She married and had children and has a respectable life at this time, but that kind of trauma is internalized indefinitely.