1. Elisabeth Fritzl. Austria
She was kept in a secret basement compound by her own father Joseph for 24 years, together with three of the seven children he fathered with her.
The man s*xually abused and ra.ped Elisabeth, sometimes several times a day, from the second day of her incarceration right up until her release in April 2008. Over the course of nearly a quarter of a century he would ra.pe her at least 3,000 times.
“Kids from the cellar” lived there for so long that they developed their own type of communication via growls, grunts and animal like sounds, although their mother tried to teach them while in the captivity.
The hostages saw the end of the h0rr@r when Joseph took one gravely ill daughter to the hospital. Soon the truth transpired.
2. Steven Stayner. USA
The 7-year-old was kidnapped by one Kenneth Parnell in 1972. The child molester told “Dennis” (as he re-christened him) that the boy’s parents had made him the legal guardian because they couldn’t afford to take care of their son. Stayner was being ra.ped until he reached puberty, after which Parnell kidnapped younger victim, 5-year-old Timmy White.
Stayner managed to escape and reach the police station to tell his story and protect White from the horrible ordeal.
Interestingly, due to the laws in place at that time, Kenneth Parnell was only sentenced to seven years and was paroled after five.
3. Fusako Sano. Japan
She was kidnapped in 1990 at the age of 10 by Nobuyuki Sato, a 28-year-old mentally disturbed man, and forcefully kept for nine years. Just 55 km from the location where she had been abducted, he kept Sano tied (the first several months) and beat her.
When rescued, Sano was extremely thin and weak due to lack of exercise: she could barely walk. While her body was that of a 19-year-old woman, mentally she acted like a child.
4. Genie. USA
Also called “feral” or “wild” child, spent nearly 13 first years of her life locked in her room. She was born in 1957 to mentally unstable parents and was at an early age diagnosed as retarded. Her father decided to try his own treatment. Withing those 13 years he always strapped her to a child’s toilet or bound her in a crib with her arms and legs completely immobilized.
Every time Genie shed a sound, he beat her. By the time the girl was discovered, she had only 20 words in her vocabulary and some phrases (mostly negative like “stop it”, “no more”).
5. Patty Hearst. Sweden
Probably, one of the most famous cases of Stockholm Syndrome (a psychological phenomenon in which hostages have sympathy and positive feelings toward their captors).
The granddaughter of the famous publisher in 1974 joined a terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, after they had kidnapped her.
Isolated and threatened with d€ath, Hearst was brainwashed into supporting their cause, making propaganda announcements for them and taking part in illegal activities.
She was found 19 months after the abduction and received a long jail sentence, which was further regarded as unjust. Her sentence was commuted (after two years in prison) by President Jimmy Carter, as it became evident that she was as much a victim as anybody else.
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