Category: News and Views
Found, but mystery remains"
Found, but mystery remains
Mark Coultan
January 20, 2007
They call it the "Missouri miracle", the rescue of two missing boys in the home of a stranger. But as the details seep out about the disappearance of one
of them, Shawn Hornbeck, the story has turned into a Missouri mystery.
Shawn Hornbeck left home on his lime-green mountain bike about 1pm on Sunday, October 6, 2002. His family didn't see him again for four years and three
months — when he was discovered living with a 41-year-old pizza shop worker, Michael Devlin, a figure who looms like every parent's nightmare. Shawn was
last seen about a kilometre from his house, about 100 kilometres from St Louis, Missouri.
For his parents Pam and Craig Akers (his mother remarried shortly after his birth) life was irrevocably changed. Any parent whose child has wandered away
for a minute in a crowd, or in a shopping centre knows that feeling. The Akers endured it for four years. But they also fought back. They gave up their
jobs to concentrate on finding their son. They started a foundation to help find missing children, handing out 45,000 identification cards. They held media
events on the anniversary of his disappearance to try to keep up awareness.
Then suddenly another boy, Ben Ownby, went missing this month. He got off the school bus and was walking home along a gravel road. A friend who got off
the bus with Ben, told police that he saw a white Nissan utility speeding away from where he had been walking.
The sighting led to the discovery of the two boys. What makes this one of the more remarkable child-abduction cases in American history is that Shawn lived
an apparently normal life with Devlin, riding his bicycle in the neighbourhood, even having access to a phone and the internet.
The extraordinary behaviour has become a bigger story than his rescue. Why didn't he alert someone he had been kidnapped?
Shawn became friends with David Douglas and his younger brother, Tony, who lived nearby. They had sleepovers at each other's houses. David told a local
TV station: "Me and my brother would be able to spend the night at his house, he'd be able to spend the night at ours. That's how much freedom he had.
When we were over at his house, he referred to his dad. They had a father-son relationship."
Shawn has even told his friends that his mother had been killed at the hands of a drunken driver. The boys' mother, Kelly Douglas, who took Shawn on excursions,
offered even more bizarre recollections. "There was times when we would see something about Shawn Hornbeck on TV. He (Shawn) would be in the room. We would
even kind of giggle, you know, 'you look just like Shawn Hornbeck'. He never acted upon it, no response, nothing. He didn't look sad, get up and go out
of the room, anything that would lead to us believing that he was actually Shawn Hornbeck."
Even the police had encountered Shawn while he was living with Devlin. In September last year a police officer stopped him when he was riding his bike at
11.20pm because he had dark clothing on and no reflectors on the bike. Glendale Police Sergeant Bob Catlett was quoted by local media as saying: "He just
appeared to be a typical 15-year-old kid riding his bike from a friend's house. He said he was Shawn Devlin, and we had no reason to doubt him."
In a further twist to the Missouri mystery, just over a year ago, at 1.59am, Shawn posted a message under the name "Shawn Devlin" on the website, ShawnHornbeck.com.
that his parents had set up as an alert. He asked: "How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?"
Then at 2:56pm the same day, he posted another message, asking if he could compose a poem for the family. The poem never appeared on the website.
Shawn also appears to have created profiles on two social networking sites, one in the name of Shawn Devlin, and on the other as a Shawn from St Louis,
describing himself as a white atheist with a pet cat. Pictures were included, showing Shawn Hornbeck outside Devlin's apartment.
So far there are few answers, many theories, and plenty of pseudo-psychological explanations about why Shawn did not raise the alarm when he had seemingly
countless opportunities to do so.
A common explanation is that he suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a condition where hostages identify with their captors. It was coined after a 1973 robbery
of the Kreditbanken in Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, where hostages were held for six days and became emotionally attached to their captors and defended them
after the event.
The most notorious example of Stockholm syndrome, until this week perhaps, was the heiress Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by members of the radical left
group the Symbionese Liberation Army but ended up sharing their aims and participated in a bank robbery, for which she was convicted but eventually pardoned.
But not everyone is convinced, and the Hornbeck family have had to cope with the inevitable rumour mill. Was Shawn really kidnapped, or did he run away?
Shock jock Bill O'Reilly roared on his Fox cable news show: "You know the Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it, I never bought it. I don't think it
happened in the Patty Hearst case. I don't think it happened here. He's got these piercings — this is a troubled kid in my opinion."
Missouri prosecutors have been more restrained in commenting about the case, but Washington County prosecutor John Rupp says: "Shawn was abducted against
his will. Period. End of story."
The authorities, and the parents, have said that they have not pushed either boy to answer questions.
Shawn's only media appearance — apart from a silent appearance at a media conference after his abduction — has so far been on the Oprah Winfrey show. Holding
both his parents' hands, he appeared withdrawn and quiet. He had lost the pierced lip he had sported when found by police. He said he had thought about
his parents every day. "I prayed that one day my parents would find me and I'd be united."
Winfrey said that one of the conditions of obtaining the interview was that she would not ask about details of his captivity, or why he had not tried to
escape. But she said after the interview, she had asked him in private why he had not tried to escape. He had replied that he was "terrified"
My take on this is, for Christ sakes, I wish the press would let this kid alone, no matter what he did or didn't do, he's been through a lot and he has a lot to deal with without our badgering him to death.
What do you think?
Bob.
Personally, I don't have enough information to go off of. It does seem strange through. Elizabeth Smart also had a chance to contact people and she didn't either.
I also think that those kids need to be interrogated This is a man's life we're talking about. THe Truth needs to be known.
I can understand how it might make this kid feel, when people badger him, but honestly, it is a little strange that he had so much freedom, but never contacted anyone. Unless, of course, the guy who had him, threatened to hurt his family or something. I could definitely understand him being afraid of something like that. There's just so many questions that need to be answered. and, whatever happened to the guy that took him? Is he in jail?
I heard one article in the newspaper where they think, but don't have proof, that he was sexually abused by this man. I think it is possible for a kid of 11, which is how old he was when he disappeared, to be brain washed and frightened into silence. I hope he can get back to normal life and trust his parents enough to tell them what happened to him. I heard that right now he won't go anywhere without at least one of his parents, which sounds to me like a kid who is happy to be back with his parents and afraid to be separated from them.
I agree. Even if we dont' hear the answers to the many questions we have, I hope that he can at least open up to his parents. It's just so good to know that he's alive and still has a chance to live a happy and wonderful life. I hope that this won't traumatize him terribly, and that he'll be able to move on.
Well, I agree with both nemoy and Bob on this issue. I do agree with Nem when he says that like it or not, questions do have to be asked of the kid because investigators do need to know what happened and why it happened. As Nem pointed out, his answers could have a massive baring on the man's life so the Police need to know. However I completely agree with Bob that the media should leave this boy alone. The investigators do need to know yes, but the rest of the World doesn't.
The likes of Oprah ought to be ashamed of themselves though I'm sure they're too busy raking in cash on the backs of other peoples misery to ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe decency should prevail.
Dan.
I agree with Nim that the investigators need to know. His parents should know. However, I don't need to know. The New York Times (or any other paper) or Bill O'Righley (who has already stuck his stupid nose in this) needs to know.
Right now, I suspect the kid feels enough guilt over what happened to him without getting additional guilt poured on him from the likes of us.
He was an eleven year old kid. If he was comfortable in his new environment, or if he was very fearful, that's not anything he did. It's just the way things were.
Bob
I agree that the media should leave him alone. I'd also like to speculate a little here. It's clear to me that the boy didn't run away, just think about it; this bastard, this would-be Gaycey, already had a second child in his hands. He was stopped just in time. I've read some articles about this guy that portray him as a time bomb; he got into so many quarrels with neighbors over a parking space, a stupid parking space! But what causes me to wonder about this boy is the fact that he posted those words on the website his parents began. It almost seems as though he's taunting them or something. But who knows?
taunting them? what a stupid thing to say, it is his way ot letting them know he is ok and still around. maybe the poem was a message to them, maybe by putting up profiles on web communities and having photos of himself in front of the place where he was living was his way to get someone to notice him and recognise him. what really gets me is the fact that these people even joked with him about looking like, well himself, but they never alerted the police. sure some would say it's an easy mistake to make, but that's not good enough in my mind. people spend to much time brushing the responsibility we have to each other aside. and thinking it doesn't conern us
Though all signs pointed to a kid with freedom in abundance and a happy life, god knows how much he had to endure before he excepted his conditions.
As others have said: questions need to be asked, but we don't need to know about it.
And...Oprah's another story. Suffice it to say I agree with Dan, wholeheartedly and then some.
This whole thing is friggin crazy. they should kill the mofo who messed up his life. He's never going to be the same again! My heart goes out to shawn and his family.
But, questions do need to be ask, I just wonder y he didn't run away if he had all the freedom, y didn't he e-mail or call his friends and family or something, y didn't he escape while the bastard as asleep or in the shower. It's so confusing. I'm the same age as he is, and when I was eleven I would have been old enough to want to book it. But then again, there's probably soooooo much more we don't know about. I wonder what Elizabeth Smart said when they asked her y she never left.
The key word was "speculate." Yes, I agree with you that it was a stupid thing for me to say, but still it's a possibility. We don't have all the facts. Don't get all worked up about it. The article does say that stockholm syndrome was a possibility, so...
I think speculating is all we can pretty much do. I do agree that the media should stay out of his face, but I do believe that his parents and the investigators should know what happened, and get some answers from him. They don't need to parade him around for everyone to see, or tell the world what they find, but I do believe that they should talk to him, and see what they can discover.
I know for a fact that he shouldn't be pressed for information except by authorities and not even then without some counciling. I wish the media would leave both of them alone and stop with the bull shit stuff i sware at one point they said the guy who snatched them was a sex offender from california. Oh my god how wrong they were if you don't know the shit don't say its certain. Leave those poor children alone let them find themselves before they fall off the deep end.
Agreed..
I feel that they need to let the kid be happy. If he was sexually abused he is not apt to say anything now anyways. He might not talk about it for years. But he needs his life back with his real family so people need to let him be.
My personal take on all of this is that as long as the child/teenager who was taken and held chooses to give an interview then so be it and I don't have a problem with it. The problem though that I do have was no matter how brief the words spoken between Shawn and Oprah, that those words should have remained private, rather than her commenting about what they shared in private, about how he was "terrified" and all. I mean like maybe he desired to be a bit more personal in his comments with her than with others.
For all anyone knows perhaps this "talking it out publicly" is having a healing effect on Shawn. I mean like he has held so much hurt within for such a long time that this may be a way that he is gaining relief…well, so long as audiences are encouraging and at all times he is given the option whether or no to give comment to any question placed to him. From my understanding Shawn choose to be on Oprah while declining other public appearances. It was an interview that he desired to do from all accounts.
Certainly I can understand a young person not desiring to comment and in the case of the younger child who was held the four days I think his parents were wise in declining he speak forth for him or he might very well have agreed to the public appearances not realizing the pressure and strain of it all… with his parents desiring more so to shield him and allow him to get back to life as he knew in the week before all of this kidnapping. Yes, these parents have gone on to do interviews but it does seem that he media are no longing involving this young one in the public interviews, that respect is being shown to this family’s desires in this matter.
Just heard on this evening’s news that the little eleven year old girl kidnapped just this past Thursday had the good sense when the one who took her stopped at a gas station/convenience store to make gasoline purchase, to while when he was busied to jump out of the car and race into the store yelling out that she was the one that had been taken and knew people would be looking for her. Sad to say the man got away but the young girl is safe.
My concern is who made the decision for the child to appear on Opra? Was it the child's or his parents' idea? Given the fact that it seems the child was in captivity, albeit an odd form of cativity, was he ready to make such a decision? I wonder if his parents were acting as responsibly as they could, considering he's still a minor. I'm glad they only granted the one media appearance for the child, as all of them need to heal.
Lou
I agree with Krystel. I'm sorry, but didn't the mother of these two boys who befriended him wonder where he came from? Did his kidnapper always live at this address? Wouldn't you think it a bit odd if a boy turned up, claiming to be your neighbour's son, looked like a missing child? I think it's sick how we all think that someone else should be responsible for speaking out.
That's what makes me even more mad!
If you want to see the ill effects of this kind of captivity, type "steven stayner" into any google search box. Steven's captivity not only affected him, (he apparently had real problems adjusting when he was returned), it affected his parents (they spent most of any money they had searching for Steven).
It especially affected his younger brother Cary Stayner who became a serial murderer in his adult life.
Bob
can you really justify that being the reason for somebody to go on to murder? You'll never know if that would have happened anyway..... What did he do, when asked, say that he murdered coz he had a messed up childhood? Is that really a reason?