Re:  the last high-profile case in Antioch, California

Kidnapping, torture & use of women by men with collusion of other women has been going on for plenty of years.  This woman made a mistake, thinking that a ride with a baby and woman in the car was safer; just as a woman that was kidnapped and raped, around 1976, by the current headline-grabber, Phillip Garrido, made a mistake of picking him up.  Unlike Colleen, she was rescued.  Please note the captivity techniques, I’m talking emotional plus physical:

My commentary is in italics or red, and this has me thinking, as naturally the Garrido case is.  I should probably stop trying to blog on it.  

1977  Wikipedia Kidnapping_of_Colleen_Stan

Colleen Stan is an American woman who was kidnapped and held as a sex slave by Cameron Hooker in Red Bluff, California, for over seven years between 1977 and 1984. At the trial of her abductor, her story was described as unparalleled in FBI history.^[1]  

On May 19, 1977, Cameron Hooker kidnapped 20 year old Colleen Stan as she was hitchhiking to a friend’s birthday party. Colleen accepted the ride and felt safe since Hooker’s wife, Janice, and their baby were in the car.

Once alone in an isolated area, Hooker pulled off the highway and put a knife to Colleen’s throat. Earlier, Cameron and Janice had reached an agreement that Janice could have a baby if Cameron could have a sex slave. She had her baby and now he had his sex slave. Colleen had been kidnapped for torture and humiliation while Janice reserved Cameron’s love and kindness for herself. There was to be no sex with Colleen according to the agreement, but this was later to change.

After her kidnapping, Colleen was tortured and kept locked in a box 23 hours a day. In January, 1978, Colleen was given a contract and forced to sign herself into slavery for life. Cameron led her to believe that she was being watched by a large, power organization called “The Company” which would painfully torture her and harm her family if she tried to escape. She was assigned a new slave name, “K”, forced to call Cameron “Master”, and not allowed to talk without permission. Cameron wanted his new slave to be like the woman in the Story of O. Shortly after becoming slave K, Cameron starting raping Colleen in violation of the agreement he had with his wife. The torture and abuse of Colleen never ended. In time, the Hooker family moved to a mobile home in Red Bluff and kept Colleen locked in wooden boxes under his and Janice’s water bed. In 1978, Janice gave birth to a second baby on the water bed above Colleen!! !! !!

Colleen’s faith in God and belief that someday she would be free helped her survive. Colleen’s greatest fear was not of Cameron, but of “The Company” which Cameron reinforced on a daily basis.

To avoid painful punishments, Colleen tried to be a good slave. In time, Colleen became a trusted slave and was allowed out to jog, work in the yard, and care for the Hooker children alone in the mobile home. Even with an open door, neighbors, and a telephone, fear of “The Company” kept her from seeking help. Colleen was even allowed to visit her family by herself in 1981. While at home, Colleen did not reveal the truth about her situation because of her fear of “The Company” and what they would do to her and her family. Her family thought Colleen must have become involved in a cult because of her homemade clothes, lack of money, and absence of communications over the years. Her family didn’t want to pressure her fearing she would go away forever. Cameron posed as Colleen’s boyfriend and returned the next day for Colleen.

MY two stolen-on-an-overnight daughters were “allowed” to visit approved adults, even in my own area, before the case went to family court, after which a mediator first ignored (and added a few lies, refusing to even give me the court-prescribed intake form, which had a SLOT for “child-stealing!”) then a (female) judge rubber-stamped the child-stealing and rewarded their father for his “initiative “in committing felony-child-stealing (at least as I read the law).  His financial reeward for this initiative came almost IMMEDIATELY from the child support agency which, although it totally bailed on enforcing or setting some standards for the arrears prior to stealing, was VERY adept at curtailing it once news got out the children weren’t in my home — because they’d been stolen!  However, they then began a real stalling game with me as I, having just been shocked, traumatized, lost a signficant round of ongoing work (2/3 of it to be specific) at the beginning of a school year, and being totally absent income from the father which, though previously unpredictable and sporadic, had occasionally come in.

In this state of shock and significant lost income, which began with the shock of having my daughters, that I’d removed from a violent marriage years ago, and was raising as best I could around escalating abuse, but we’d just found a very decent home, nearby; just started the school year, etc.,  I was supposed to fight, ALONE in my own family, a legal battle to get the kids back.  My mother, who’d been roped into the family clan game, was (I later learned) bullied out of providing funds enough to an attorney to get them back even though she didn’t approve of this event, which she (apparently) was misled into thinking was not going to happen, even when I’d been actively saying it was about to, and trying to pr3event it!  (While also handling life, moving, etc.)

This was not in a box below a water bed, it was surreal and out in the open (but decisions made behind closed doors of courtrooms, and other households, etc.) and like a waking nightmare.

They have since been “broken” or convinced that the designated family member (me) is now the “bad” member, because I didn’t just get over it, and accept the extended polygamy thing, and the kidnappers {sic– not out of state] (who are more than one) are the rescuers and truly care for them.  I supp0se — all I know is that people who had been “screened” previously (i.e., were willing to take antagonistic action towards me) were approved as seeing my daughters while this man was in violation of a physical custody order, for several weeks.  My failure to get them back was definitely related to my realization that police were not going to act on this, combined with what the father would do should I attempt to, a second time.  Although prior to this date (about 3 years ago), I was instead trying to get help, get enforcement, and get financially free as well (from this person I left many years ago), AND to prevent this incident, which WAS foreseeable, but too many “ENABLERS” chose to “ENABLE” a father and ignore the mother in the case.  I credit the overall sexism and misogyny flowing through the system with the tolerance of this.  I’m not the only such parent by a long shot.  

Since that month, several years ago, I have become seriously concerned about WHAT would cause two American-born men, and their wives or women, to so devalue the laws of this state and country, and be SO paranoid about unsupservised contact with my two daughters with people/adults/teachers who might actually get to know them well as people.  the educational system was in constant turmoil (intentionally), private lessons were curtailed for the girls, and my jobs as well were (like the whiplash involved in trying to ride this out) also in turmoil.  Traumatic bonding with where the power balance went was obvious.  Confusion, and false imprisonment, isolation, and I deduce from the court papers that my girls, too, were told that I would retaliate severely upon them for betraying me (when the fact was, the father was retaliating upon me for showing independence including in granting one girls’ specific school request, which would’ve put her in school-time contact with a close friend).  Letters — not like Colleen Stan’s, but with certain similar characteristics — were obtained from my daughters and trotted out in court as if they were truly voluntary in this context:  Stay with Mom and take the heat, or come with us and get relief.

Circles that my daughters have been “allowed” out in include, naturally, church circles.  One kid is even now in college, but a college was chosen (with zero input from me, naturally — this was part of the communal clan “put-down” of their mother for asserting some input into daughters’ futures) and this daughter enrolled.  This college is hard to get into, and LARGE.  It also “just happens” to be within a short bike ride from one of the abducting (or abduction-enabling) adult couple’s home.  I have spoken with my daughter about this and congratulated her on her getting in, and spoken that I believe someday she will need to reconcile this family business, and that I would’ve recommended an out-of-state one where she might get some distance from our “dysfunctional family.”  I was not given a forwarding address or dorm address.  i don’t know what would happen should I try to contact her there.  I hope and pray that she will come into contact with some individuals in this college campus who will help her put thing sin perspective (as well as behind her), but also where at some point in time, she will at least KNOW the truth.

In situations of ongoing family abuse, people get sacrificed, and the others around them seem to decide WHO is the victim.  Think “gang” and you have the right idea.  This is evident in the case below.  Lives are, naturally wrecked.

Sorry to bring this up, but these thoughts come up when dealing with the similarities, nasty ones, with the principles of kidnapping, abduction, intent, lies to those abducted, and threats, and the period of grooming, isolating, threatening, and so forth.  The strong of spirit/faith/lucky get free.  

I don’t know how any mother, such as Jaycee Dugard’s, or Colleen’s (below) could ever ‘get free’ from the situation of knowing a child was stolen in this manner.

It happens all the time through the family court system, and this is a social issue that the United States had better deal with soon.  It IS a form of child-trafficking complete with enablers, and fees exchanged, and excuses.  Makes me want to vomit when I think about it, adult pretentious people pretending to be nice, while covering up these sorts of crimes.

Cameron, fearing he had given his slave too much freedom, took her back to his mobile home and locked her in the wooden box under his water bed. Colleen remained in the box 23 hours a day for the next three years sleeping, dreaming, and praying. The Hooker children were told “Kay” (a form of Colleen’s slave name K) had gone home.

 In other words, lies all round…  Constant lying is an indicator something’s wrong, folks, and you’d best ask WHAT!

At night, after the children had gone to bed, Cameron would take Colleen out of the box to feed and torture her. It wasn’t until 1984 that Colleen was reintroduced to the children and neighbors, and allowed to get a job as a maid at a motel. As the children were getting older, Cameron knew things had to change. He wanted Colleen to become his second wife. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

My daughters, TOO, were “allowed” to get housecleaning and babysitting work.  For church folk, I heard.  They were sent out off the country on an evangelism trip.  They were allowed to see, naturally, the relatives who felt that a judge didn’t know what he/she was doing in granting sole physical custody after domestic violence to the mother, and so forth.  Rather than go to court and present actual facts supporting a custody switch, the children were stolen first (after extracting letters from them first), and then falsely imprisoned for a few weeks, in a dramatic and traumatizing fashion, I’m sure to them too, not just me.  It was brazen, and this was staged and happened AT a law enforcement station.  How do you think my kids felt?  Do they remember?

They were not allowed to participate in anything of the quality or the nature of their former lifestyle, most particularly anything involving regular contact with an adult professional teacher, or participation in after school performing or sports groups with anyone they’d formerly been associated with.  In other words, with any group that this particular set of adults, plural supporting the criminal removal of daughters from their mother’s household, was not “on top of.”

In these situations, everyone has an assigned role, as is seen from the Colleen case, and can be seen from the Jaycee Dugard case, or practically any other situation of brainwashing, lying, deceit and criminal or cult-like behavior  

The same thing goes for being stuck in a battering relationship.  After a while, the concept of getting out becomes faint, but a hope, but when a sense that you are going to get out is felt by the perpetrator, things can heat up or blow up FAST.  This is how I experienced it, and once I started to leave (the battering relationship, and mine happened to be marriage, too), I had to make sure I finished the process.

Unfortunately, there was another system around to make sure I did NOT finish the process, and this is a trap – I see it as that — that many women face, when attempting to leave any relationship with children intact.  There is a whole domain of law that is in communal denial (no matter what they proclaim, I assert) that domestic violence can be lethal.  I think that one factor that allows this system to stay in such denial is that they are not the ones about to be shot, stabbed, threatened, hung or clubbed to death.  Or extorted for cash or kids later on in the process.  Or, a lesser version of this, somehow forced onto the street/homeless.  But after enough assaults and events for enough years, one thoroughly realizes that implicit threats can be acted on, and the thing is, to figure out which ones are bluffs and which are not, as Colleen, eventually, learned here.

Sometimes someone gets lucky and one of the many women (or I suppose men) the bastard has also been betraying and being cruel to, or otherwise using, gets tired of it and reports, or turns him in.  

To enable this, everyone has an assigned role.  I don’t think my own family (and certain others involved) realizes to what extent I understand who is playing which role.  It’s transparent if you are outside the system.  There are the scouts, pretending solicitously to be concerned about other players (cf.  “good cop, bad cop”) which comes out when the “good cop” one is asked to act on their supposed empathetic understanding of the situation.  The ability to turn coat on a dime is an indicator of who one is dealing with.

There have to be those who financially support it — everyone needs to eat, right?  Housing is needed.  

There are the planners and there are the enablers.  These things are not usually one-person operations, for sure. ONE thing is for sure, the children or young ladies stolen WILL work hard, and work to pay their own way in a situation, the extent of which will appear afterwards.

When the various people involved get more brazen (as has happened in my case), this is frightening, and such is the case in recent (last 2) years.  Because the harm could be to onesself OR to a family member.  I’ve seen it go both ways when I wasn’t sufficiently intimidated.

I think a pack of dogs would figure out the pecking order quicker, but unfortunately, human beings, especially adult ones, get tired of being on the receiving end, and tend to fight back over time.  This is why abusers keep abusing, and escalating over time; they know they have to ride herd over others.  Let’s hope every single one of these types of bastards makes a mistake in judgement as to his cohorts, and that every single woman or girl in this situation somehow gets free.

Can you imagine the trauma of the woman in the box in this story?  Yet she gets free (read on).  So do some POWs.  

To my daughters:

• Daughters, I miss you, and sometimes I think that  you may read this, and not knowing what state of belief you are in these days, you may react in anger.  It’s been years, and I have not been able to accomplish what I wanted in this matter.  I’m distressed because of the HOW it happened, let alone that this could happen in our country.  I have also tried to reconcile morally any “moving on” when as far as I know you are not physically far away, even.  
• Know for sure that you don’t know all the story; there are other chapters going on in different arms of the “family” to prolong (or worsen) the status quo, in short depriving you of another working parent, when previously there WAS at least one, me.  I’m sorry about that.
• You should know that I never wished this on you, and that in time, it will HAVE to be acknowledged in which direction truth was, and truth was not in these matters.  There are court papers, there are facts, and there are memories, and there is a lot of confusion for sure.  But both of your strength and innate intelligence is there, and I trust goodness left in there to make sure that, depending on when I see you next and if YOU go on and have kids, you will NEVER subject them to this.
• You will need some feminism one of these days.  Make sure you get to it somehow.  Make friends outside church circles, and be wary.
• As you know, I didn’t originally come from this statae, but came to get to know my family of origin, as adults.  I can say with certainty, that I entirely regret this matter; they were NOT worth it, but the one great thing that happened in this state was your births and getting to know you growing up.  The rest of it, I chalk up to experience and misguided loyalties to people I share DNA with.  Don’t EVER fall for that again; the indicator is, if they are not bothering to contact you for a few decades, let it go, you don’t owe them something.  
• I WILL be contacting you (if possible) as soon as I know BOTH of you and I can do so without retaliation.  By the way, there was intercepted and returned mail, and I can’t afford continual “registered” mail circus.  You know where I am.
• Do not ever sink so low as to do participate, or enable, something like this to happen to someone else.  And don’t believe everything you are told.  Remember I did NOT prevent visitation from happening, year after year, but one day, your other parent made sure it never happened again, even when a court order said “every other week, every other vacation and two weeks in the summer.”  It was never obeyed.  Til the point, it became meaningless.  WHy go through all those procedures if none of them are respected?  
• 
  
• Don’t ever lie unless you are being threatened to, and safety is involved.  People who want you to lie will also lie to you, and already are.

• I am not free to confront this yet, grandma is involved.  Things will change sometimes.
• And don’t ever, ever hitchhike!

(I don’t know why I”m going to post this today, I just felt like it……  It’s so hard to blog on the Garridos, but so important.  Another source (Chesler) put these two together, so perhaps by writing on one further distant (in years) it will be easier somehow).

BACK TO THE CASE FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Janice had also been tortured and brainwashed over the years by her husband. She was both a co-conspirator and a victim herself. She had survived through denial and compartmentalization. By August 1984, her world was falling apart. Janice went to Colleen and told her Cameron was not part of “The Company.” With fear of “The Company” removed, Colleen got on a bus and went home. Colleen didn’t go to the police because she wanted to give Cameron, at Janice’s request, a chance to reform. However, Cameron continued to show an interest in sadism. Three months later it was Janice, not Colleen, who reported Cameron to the police.

The police, during their investigation, discovered Colleen may not have been Cameron’s first victim. Disappearing in 1976, Marie Elizabeth Spannake had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. Unable to locate the remains of the woman and with no physical proof, Cameron was never charged with murder.

Once back home, Colleen went to school for an accounting degree, married, and had a daughter.^[2] She also joined an organization to help abused women. Both Colleen and Janice have changed their last names and continue to live in California. There is no communication between the women. In March 2009, an updated version of Colleen’s story, in her own words, was published under the title “Colleen Stan, The Simple Gifts of Life” (ISBN 978-1440118371.)

[edit]Trial

Chris Hatcher, forensic psychologist and criminal profiler, testified for the prosecution at the start of the 1985 trial.^[3]

Hooker was in the end sentenced to consecutive terms for the sexual assaults, for the kidnapping, and for using a knife in the process, for a total of 104 years imprisonment. He will be eligible for parole in 2022.

{{Well we’re all forewarned, I guess!}}

Janice, Hooker’s wife, testified against Cameron at the trial in exchange for full immunity.  

{{DAMN! However, that’s how it goes hanging out with crooks, I suppose.  Watch your back, or pick better friends.}}