My situation continues to unfold at its own rate.

unrelated to anything appropriate for honoring 911.  I have been thinking about the times I called 911 and didn’t get help, or of the times the police RACED to the scene of an incident and did everything right, but still were unable to save.  Or when they (as so many did on this 9/11/01) were there and gave their lives to help as many as possible escape the two huge boxes called the World Trade Towers.  

As this blog is on family court matters, I still think the theme of boxes is appropriate, and particularly in regards situations of a child-stealing, kidnapping, or such.  To be stuck in a relationship is one thing, to lose one’s kids is totally another. 

The first article tells some more aspects of the Dugard case, but the second one, so well written I thought, is in the voice of Colleen who was kidnapped, stored in a box, renamed, tortured (etc.)  She is alive, she escaped, has had help and healing and looks, today, beautiful from what I can see.  (this photo is not most current — see end of post).  Thank God.  (Luke 4).

Colleen (NOT Jaycee or her daughters), shortly post-escape.  Her escape was not from a 911 call, but when one of her captors opened a mental bar, revealed that one of the threats against her leaving was in fact a lie.  She then got on a bus and went home.  An amazing story.

FIRST story is about recent rescue, SECOND story (far, far below….) is about what this woman, Colleen, has to say to Jaycee Dugard, about recovery, and to the rest of us, about the types of prisons that keep kidnapped women in place.  I believe much of this information is transferable to other situations.

Fasten your seat belts, this one has some unexpected twists and turns. . . . and little stylistic consistency  (readers have been warned already) as I quoted within quotes, and pasted from WOrd perfect, dragged article information from the web, and added my commentary and tried to piece at least the more recent case together from the Web.

Police: Kidnap suspect fathered victim’s kids

Demian Bulwa, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Henry K. Lee,Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writers

Friday, August 28, 2009

(08-27) 19:56 PDT ANTIOCH —   

Phillip Craig Garrido was already known as an oddball who said he could channel the voice of God through a makeshift box, but on Thursday, the eccentricity took on an aura of horror.

Eighteen years ago, authorities said, he kidnapped 11–year–old Jaycee Lee Dugard on her way to catch a school bus in South Lake Tahoe. Ever since then, they said, he kept her prisoner in a squalid backyard compound near Antioch, raping her and fathering two daughters by her – the elder of whom is now 15.

Those girls also were housed in sheds and other outbuildings in the backyard, which had been walled off so it couldn‘t easily be seen by neighbors or other outsiders, authorities said.

One of the sheds where Dugard and the girls were living could only be opened from the outside, Kollar said, and rudimentary toilets and electrical hookups were set up nearby.

“None of the children have ever been to school; they‘ve never been to a doctor,” the undersheriff said at a press conference in Placerville. “They were kept in complete isolation in this compound.”

 

Neighbors‘ suspicions

Neighbors in the unincorporated, semi–rural area outside Antioch where the Garridos live say they always thought he was bizarre, and even suspected something fishy was going on with the girls he called his daughters – but they thought authorities were keeping tabs on it all.

So much for THAT line of thinking.  Compartmentalization, delegation of authorities to the authorities so the rest of us don’t have to really get to know our neighbors, watch out for them, hold them to a standard so much, and can focus on our own business.  Protection and monitoring is not our job, it’s someone else’s.

 

Phillip Garrido is a registered sex offender, and authorities inspected his house several times over the years but never discovered the backyard compound.

The neighbors and other acquaintances said Garrido conducted religious revivals in a tent, claimed to hear the voices of angels and God, and said he had developed a device through which he could control sound with his mind. He propounded this all in a business he called “God‘s Desire.“

Apparently he himself wasn’t confined to a box.

In a telephone interview from jail with Sacramento TV station KCRA, Garrido said, “In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story.”

Again, HOW heartwarming depends on whether one’s perspective is from outside, or inside the box.  And whose voice we are hearing.  

One article says that the first phone call a prisoner normally makes is for the attorney, but this man called the TV station instead.

 

Suspect did time

Officials said Garrido served time in Nevada on kidnapping and rape convictions in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s and was paroled after one stint in 1988 and another in June 1999. It was not immediately clear where Dugard may have been while Garrido was in custody.

One of the rapes he was caught at, that sent him to prison, took place in a storage unit.  This man seems to be an expert at boxes, and putting women in them.

It appears that after Garrido was “BOXED” up for this, he was sprung though, after marrying Nancy Garrido while incarcerated.  Nancy was appropriate — she had a religious background (Jehovah’s Witness) and an uncle in the box as well, apparently.  Kidnappers and rapers need love, too, right?

Neighbors of the Garridos on Walnut Avenue – and even some of his own family – considered Phillip Garrido strange as he proselytized to them about his messages from God and kept the females at his house from contact with outsiders.

The House Box.

 

Erika Pratt, 25, who stayed next door two years ago, said she was continuously “freaked out” by Garrido‘s behavior and that when she popped her head over the fence she saw his secret compound. There were tents, sheds and pit bulls, she said, and water hoses leading from her house next door.

‘They never talked‘

“He had little girls and women living in that backyard, and they all looked kind of the same,” Pratt said. “They never talked, and they kept to themselves.”

Pratt said people came and went from the property, but the core group consisted of two girls about 4 years old, one girl about 11, another girl about 15 and a young woman about 25. They were all blond, she said.

Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff‘s deputies to investigate, but that officers “told me they couldn‘t go inside because they didn‘t have a warrant. So they just told him they‘d keep an eye on him.”

 

So like a well-trained citizen — or, like a woman who didn’t want to offend a freaky neighbor with pit bulls — she dropped it there. Leave it to the county sheriffs.  

My message to any future 23-years old, especially women, who see things like this going on with their neighbors — it’s OK to seek information; please care enough to follow up beyond the Sheriff’s Office and/or WITH the Sheriff’s Office if you see anything like this, or which sets of an internal alarm.  Keep seeking until some answer is found.  

I would LOVE to see any records or hear any tapes of those calls.  Let’s all start keeping recording devices handy and, if calling the police, inform them that we, too, are recording our calls.

You can’t just go barging in on someone’s boxes without a warrant.  

Police said Thursday that the only people living in the yard when the Garridos were arrested were Dugard and her daughters.

Has anyone on-line followed up on who those about-4 year old girls were, and what year it was that Ms. Pratt saw them?  Mr. Bulwa, Vanderbeken, Lee, or Fagan, who wrote this article?   Who is this Erika Pratt, she seems observant where others weren’t?

.  Time’s Person of the Week on 7/26/02?  Of Wikipedia fame, an African-American 7 year old who, kidnapped from Philadelphia — in an attempt to extort money from her grandmother, on the belief that she’d received life insurance from the shooting of an uncle:

No, that Erica is now only 14 years old.

The story: Erica was held for one long night and day in the basement of an empty house, her hands and feet bound with duct tape. She chewed through the tape, kicked open a basement door and made her way to a window where she screamed until someone heard her and came to her rescue. The little girl was plucky, but also lucky. The motive for the kidnapping was not sexual but financial; her abductors asked for a $150,000 ransom, perhaps believing a false neighborhood rumor that Erica’s family had received that sum as a life insurance payment after her uncle was shot and killed last month. Police Thursday arrested James Burns and Edward Johnson in connection with the kidnapping.

EXTORTION OF ELDERS IS ANOTHER ‘CLUE’ AND WAS A PREDECESSOR IN THE GARRIDO CASE AS WELL.

THIS ADVICE STILL APPLIES, and is why I also suggest Mace & Self-defense classes, not Restraining Order Suggestions after Domestic Violence, which externalizes the source of safety and in practice, really consists of “hope-mongering,” at some level…

For parents wondering if it’s safe to let their kids even leave the living room without supervision, the most reassuring part of Erica’s story is that, faced with a situation in which many adults would panic, she kept her head and saved herself. In the end, maybe the best defense you can give your kids is not a blind fear of strangers but rather instilling self-assurance and presence of mind. “I have 21 years in the Police Department,” said Philadelphia Police Inspector William Colarulo, “and I have never seen this kind of heroic act of bravery committed by a 7-year-old.” Neither have we.

re:  “911” —

This other Erika Pratt was taken from Southwestern Phillie, and it’s a moot point whether, had she had a cell phone, 911 would’ve stopped the event.  Once you’re gone, most kidnappers are smart enough to cut off telephone and other contacts from the outside, so when being taken hostage in ANY manner, the key is to respond like this inner-city African American young girl, whose uncle had already died (or so rumor had it) in the streets, to fight Hard, til free, and RIGHT AWAY.  She hadn’t been indoctrinated into passivity yet, I guess.  Do we REALLY want to breed out “rebel” from society?  ??

This Erika is the ex-girlfriend of Garrido neighbor Damon Robinson, per this article:

The house is in a ramshackle neighborhood of modest single-family homes in an unincorporated area of Antioch hit by the foreclosure crisis and job losses.

Garrido’s next door neighbor Damon Robinson was interviewed several times by the AP, Los Angeles Times and other media. During those conversations, he revealed his ex-girlfriend, Erika Pratt, had called police in 2006 to report Garrido had children living in tents in his backyard.

While Robinson was being interviewed by the AP and others, three members of a British media group walked onto his property without his permission.

When Robinson asked what they were doing, a British reporter told Robinson his deadline was coming quickly and offered him $2,000 if he would quit talking to everyone else and provide them an exclusive showing of his backyard.

The reporter flashed $100 as an apparent sign of good faith. Robinson, who acknowledged that another British outlet had also paid him, agreed. Robinson, who is unemployed, did not disclose what outlets paid him and it was not clear from the interaction.

Robinson led the crew deep into his backyard, where a hole in his fence provided a glimpse of the shambled compound next door.

Robinson said he would use the money for his two children and might also give some to Dugard’s daughters.

If this story, also from neighbor Mike Rogers, holds water, perhaps Erika Pratt was right to get her behind OUT of there.  Perhaps (?) this also may relate to why CC Sherriffs were not so aggressive in follow-up?  Or if Ms. Pratt was, like at least two of the Erika Pratt’s I saw on-line, African-American, this may be why her reports didn’t hold weight?  Or was it her gender?

(ROGERS) The Antioch builder told theDaily Mail that Garrido made crystal meth using household utensils and frequently invited “perverts” to his home to regale in drugs, sex and drinking. Rogers went so far as to call the Garrido home a brothel.

He said he discussed the matter with his brother, Dean, who also lives in the neighborhood. Rogers said they agreed not to contact police explaining, “People don’t even waive to each other or say hello here. You just pay no attention to what is going on with other people. That way, you don’t get shot.”

He now agonizes (in public) over that decision and worries that Garrido may have been pimping out Jaycee and her young daughters to strangers. “I hope to God not,” said Dean Rogers.

(**Mr. Dean Rogers is also re-filing this information (at least acc. to report) in HIS brain as to agonizing, whereas earlier, acc. to the Rogers brother Mike, not getting shot for ratting to the police was the priority, and hence pimping out someone NOT a kidnap victim or one’s own daughters, alternatively, MIGHT be OK….)

‘A blank stare‘

Haydee Perry, 35, who lives next door, said that when Phillip Garrido helped her jump–start her car a month ago, he had a young girl clinging to him in a manner that struck her as strange.

“She stayed close to him at all times,” Perry said. “It wasn‘t normal behavior. She had a blank stare on her face. ***Now it seems like a cry out for help.”

i.e., according to Ms. Perry (age 35 now) the fact was first filed in a box in her mind (face it, we all have these, or we couldn’t function in life.  WE would have to become not just ill-literate, but basically a wordless society.  One of the first things “Adam” is credited with doing in the Bible is naming all the animals.  Then here comes a woman, and he named her, too, “Eve.”  The process of calling women names has continued to this day; it’s part of how one masters any situation, is by naming it. 

 

A fascinating book on humans vs. animals, and how they interpret situations, is called “Animals in Translation.”  Humans specialize in interpreting situations, animals that are other animal’s food are more prone to notice more detail and interpret less.  The author, who is/was autistic, tries to describe her differences between these two extremes from the perspective of autism.  

 

This book helped me become more aware of how people who had not undergone a battering relationships of many years, or post-traumatic-stress-“disorder” (actually a pretty normal response to life-threatening situations, it’s only “disorder” once the life-threatening aspects are out of the picture and there has been time to heal and deal….) just didn’t notice fluctuations in patterns of behavior, or things that others might.  What they notice, and then wish action to be taken on (OR, wish to themselves take action on) then becomes a point of conflict with self-appointed experts on the situation, sometimes with lethal consequences.  So understanding this becomes vitally important when a person leaving the abuse is forced to continually interact and negotiate with former abusers, or people who colluded with or enabled it.  

 

The public MUST balance its desire to deny that abuse — or women in boxes, or kidnappers who start another generation of captives and get away with this in suburban California — or their neighbor/friend/business supplier, or someone in their religious organization — might be in another context, an insane sadist and unbelievable criminal, with women helping in the process, or participating.  No matter how many “out there” headlines are read, I’d say that generally speaking, public behavior as a whole is not going to change radically.  Why?  It would — and face it, it really would — disrupt the economy severely, if citizens took policing or child protection into their own hands.  Women have been thrown in jail for doing this when the abuser was related to the children; they overstepped their authority when it came to sticking up for their kids’ right not to be traumatized, and their own, through that.  THAT is one of the most closely-sealed boxes in the family court arena, although certain groups are starting to pry some of it open in some counties, with some (although how much is yet unclear) result.

 

How I myself got out of a battering relationship involved calling it what it was, also.  Without the vocabulary, including legal vocabulary, I believe, I’d still be in there, or in a box several feet under.  Naming and filing is a VITAL human activity; and it’s important to put what we observe OUTSIDE us in a proper place in the thinking INSIDE.  

 

This is important as a community also.  What Ms. Perry >then< saw as “strange” and filed it away, she >now< has refiled under as a “cry for help.”   

 

In another scenario, and the one which led to the girls and Jaycee being freed, Officer Allison Jacobs, another woman, recounted that one of Jaycee’s daughters blue eyes seemed to be trying to burn a hole in her.  (See my post on police initution~mother’s instinct, or that article for quote).  Both women in two situations noticed the girls’ eyes.. . . . GUYS — do men do this?   

 

This whole process, in the press, may be also seen as an attempt to help the public also “file” this whole incident in its communal (?) databank for future reference (as well as a surefire way to increase readership/ratings).

 

I think that book and topic deserves another post, and will leave it for now.

 

 

 

 

(QUOTING NEWS ARTICLE, CONT’D.)  A Web site containing statements from Garrido and others called “Voices Revealed” talks about a turnaround that allowed him “to open doors that will honor the creator and his eternal purpose for mankind.”

A PANDORA’s BOX, Oh No!

In which Let’s Get Honest laments that she has herein just opened the PANDORA’S BOX of what GARRIDO WAS SAYING BEFORE ARREST, WHERE HE GOT THOSE IDEAS FROM, and SOME OF HIS BUSINESS ASSOCIATES.  On the other hand, I’m a mother who lost my daughters — to the courts, and their father — on an overnight visitation.  Many things already make no sense to those who think that police police, judges judge, and laws are, well, upheld, who wonders why public indignation just takes a hike when a husband & wife are involved, even YEARS AFTER THEY SEPARATED!  

LET’S GET HONEST COMMENTARY:  There are times (added to post 09-13-09) I truly wish I weren’t as curious as I am.  I just “HAD” to go and open another “Pandora’s Box,” in other words, I wanted to know what the heck “Voices Revealed” was.  

I know that PART of my curiosity stems from simply wanting to find out WHY in this culture it took so many years for my local communities to “wake up” (if they ever did) to the fact that a husband was assaulting his wife in the home, and only ONE of them, a family violence law center, actually took action to legally put a stop to it.  I was functioning as well as most people could as a mother, worker, and amazingly, teacher & musician and quite a bit more of professional involvements, without the tools MANY people can take for granted, for example, any possibility that I would have legitimate control over how the income earned was used, or my own access to bank, transportation, credit, and free association with people in my profession, without either sabotage or punishment for doing so.  . . . . . . . So afterwards, what seemed REAL simple to me – — the fact we needed a LITTLE help didn’t mean that we needed to be placed in the back seat of life, permanently, and moreover told where the car was going.  WHen one is on the bottom, the clear place to go is UP.  FAST!  

The other part is probably innate.  I don’t remember NOT being curious, or something of a girl, young woman, or older woman, who just wanted to know WHY, and noticed things.  When I say “innate,” I am not the first individual in the family line to either be subject to or witness, or both, beatings of a Mom in the home, and who knows whether this habit came from that environment or not?  And, at a certain point, who cares?  The question is, what to do with it.

Anyhow, here is that “Voices Revealed” website, and one part of it that happens to make some SENSE (and has a “not affiliated” comment at the end, please note) goes as follows (quote is shown by the font & typestyle change).  

I wouldn’t quote it if there weren’t a few important lessons to learn from it (I know I did), including pay attention, if you’re going to be gullible enough to actually read newspapers about headline stories (which, obviously, I am) to be curious enough to want to know what they were talking about.  I guess one UPside of being involved in this system and periodic, sometimes long-term unemployment, along with the desire to STOp the periodic, and sometimes long-term unemployment that comes with domestic violence by exploring ways to stop it, most of which don’t work, is finding out how a lot of systems DO work.  ANYHOW, Voices Revealed, quoting another “private educational group” in Washington, pastes on its site:

CULTURAL TRANCE

Is a condition that exists when large bodies of people have accepted something as truth.

In the days of Columbus everyone knew the earth was “flat.” Today everyone knows it is not possible to produce voices for others to hear as experience clearly marked it as not possible.

The reason I have taken the time to qualify my findings through the legal system is obvious.

When you hear of my findings you will be experiencing a “flat world concept”

Because everything we know is based on our past personal and educational experiences in life thus we have all been conditioned in a variety of ways that can build “blind spots.” It is a sensory locking out of the environment that builds a Scotoma to the truth about the world and ourselves because of our preconceived ideas.

This causes us to:

SEE what we EXPECT to SEE

HEAR what we EXPECT to HEAR

THINK what we EXPECT to THINK

The result is we often develop scotomas to the “TRUTH.”

This awareness is also about to be apply to an age old book

That will be reading in a powerfully unique way

It will allow us to hear what we

Have never heard before.

(Isaiah 6:9)

9He said, “Go and tell this people: `Be ever hearing, but never understanding;

be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ N.I.V.

The preceding information in its basic form** is from a private educational corporation

(THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE, INC. Seattle, Washington)

And is not affiliated with this project in any capacity

Re;  “in its basic form”** I looked.  While I didn’t find this section (yet), I did see, below, The Pacific Institute’s fields of enterprise, and the phrase about the human mind as software which needs periodic “upgrading,”:

However, the basic knowledge of how the mind works is constant from individual to individual, continent to continent. “The hardware is pretty much the same; what we are dealing with is the human software – and that, my friends, can and should be upgraded on a regular basis.” says Tice.

If my mind is software, well, I’m constantly in a learning curve.  What frightens me as much, if not more than, the middle-aged, white-boy Phillip Garridos of this world, with their religiously compliant women in tow, trying to prove that the mind can channel external voices of this world through boxes in public, and kidnapping, imprisoning, repeatedly raping (possibly also pimping) and fathering little girls in private — and believe me, this DOES frighten me, I have daughters, and their father that parentally abducted them is a middle-aged, religious white-boy also — is ANY aged ANY color people in positions of responsibility believing that human minds should be (note passive tense) “upgraded” in time.

Whenever you see passive tense in a sentence (“Minds . . . . should be upgraded”) and there is no “by whom” or adverbial “HOW” in the same sentence, be afraid.  Be very afraid.  Especially when it appears on the mission page of any company which does business with jails, educational institutions, and other agencies.

Upgraded By WHOM?  There was a Dr. Who mightmare TV program about this very upgrade process.  It’s the stuff of science fiction.  

1709 Harbor Ave SW
Seattle, WA  98126-2073(Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA Metro Area)

(The Tall man on the left needs no introduction.  The two on the right are the co-founders of this Pacific Institute, Inc., which Phillip Garrido’s site quotes, and which in many ways resembles at least two organizations RUNNING (and I do mean that) the court system nationwide, if not internationally.  I am going to blog on these now for sure.  One is Public Strategies, Inc. and another (similar) is “MCDRC” (I will look up proper initials in a bit here); their BUSINESS, and it is a very prosperous one, is outsourcing, evaluating, and reporting back on the many “demonstration” projects across a spectrum of government policy initiatives and arms, i.e., courts, child support, child abuse, law enforcement, jails (yes, jails), and helping low-income people (makes one wonder how some of us GOT to be low-income people, or why some communities and ethnicities, overall, tend to stay that way, with some escaping the cycle, and others not).  These are where socialization takes place by one part of society upon the other parts of society not lucky (or in some senses, immoral?) enough to be engaged in these professions, until eventually society viewed from the perspective of, say, outside itself, might start to look from a few feet above (or below) like THIS:

THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE (AND NOW MY POST IS GETTING TOO LONG..)

Global Vision

From the beginning, The Pacific Institute’s co-founders, Lou and Diane Tice, have held to the vision that the education they assembled would be beneficial to people all over the world. Yes, cultural differences do exist. However, the basic knowledge of how the mind works is constant from individual to individual, continent to continent. “The hardware is pretty much the same; what we are dealing with is the human software – and that, my friends, can and should be upgraded on a regular basis.” says Tice.   {{SEE MY COMMENT ABOVE}}

 

1980 marked the beginning of a rapid expansion of The Pacific Institute beyond North America.

Like the “fatherhood” movement, it wasn’t marketed or promoted, it just naturally “expanded.”

Today, the Institute’s varied curricula have been translated and adapted to serve organizations in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the South Pacific, as well as North America. It is an honor for The Pacific Institute to be able to serve {{to serve WHOM, exactly??}}

as an agent for positive transformation in the world.  

{{Transforming, or upgrading the human mind’s software? Transformation can be good, or bad.  It’s not always good! Who defines which way “positive” is, anyhow?}}

Our Mission

As we continue to expand our reach around the world, {{IS this Marketing, or Colonialism? I’m a little uncertain which..}}  our mission {{which as yet remains undentified…}}  continues as a standard of excellence:

 

{{It continues “AS” a standard?  Spoken like a true educator, in other words, in vague, noble-sounding, garbled -grammar, proclamation style. . .  Thanks for explaining HOW (although not in much detail, here) your mission serves its unidentified master (servant/master, right?), but what I’m really concerned about is what IS your “mission,” kindly The Pacific Institute, sir/ma’am?}}{{If your mission is being adopted, or at least interpreted “in its basic form,” by rapist kidnappers, I definitely want to know what it is.}}

“We affirm the right of all individuals to achieve their God-given potential. The application of our education (BY WHOM??  TO WHOM??) empowers people to recognize their ability to choose growth, personal freedom and personal excellence.

As opposed to, say, Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, which in the US at least, are (supposedly) considered unalienable rights, and the fact that ALL men are endowed with these rights is considered “self-evident,” along with several other “self-evident truths.”  . . . . Suppose all individuals are not interested in “growth, personal freedom and personal excellence” but simply want to stay Alive, Free, and go for “happiness” instead?  Do they get to NOT choose to change the Color of their Parachute?  ???

(i.e., compare, Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”)

We commit ourselves to providing this education, all over the world, through all means that are just and appropriate.”

Indeed, this institute, which began with a high school football coach and art teacher (Note:  sports and arts are typically areas cut when budgets are tight) who just wanted to help — everybody, of course.  Now, it preaches to the world, capturing also the imagination of men like Phillip Garrido.  But its clients most definitely include government entitites, acc. to the website, under “social solutions.”  {{I shudder!}}

Government entities, from federal agencies to local municipalities; law enforcement agencies and correctional institutions; and the full spectrum of social service agencies all benefit from the wide range of The Pacific Institute’s services.

 

With so many differing, and sometimes competing, agencies working from different angles – yet committed to helping those at the margins of society – it helps to be speaking the same language.

 

i.e., The language of the educators, of Mr. & Mrs. Tice and people who think that their purpose in life truly IS, teaching the rest of the world to think, and have forgotten “all the world’s a stage” and a good deal of great literature, and instead see all the world as one Big, Fat, Market Niche.  LOOK, for “all the world’s a stage” there is the medium of the BLOG.  When it comes to captive audiences, literally in many cases, I protest!  

Law enforcement agencies successfully implementCommand, Control & Choice™ into their officer training academies, Thought Patterns for High Performance™ for staff and non-badged personnel, as well as Investment in Excellence®

New for 2008 is Discovering the Power in Me™, a program focused on the suddenly disabled – those individuals, their families and caregivers, whose lives have been affected by sudden, permanent injury. The Institute’s effective thinking skills education is targeted to move these individuals from recovery and rehabilitation to contribution and achievement. 

I have studied several languages, and also “speak” the language of music, which is a language.  I am not in favor of Esperanto or any other form of one-world government, and I think that George Orwell and Aldous Huxley made some good points in their works of fiction, which I wish were more fiction than, as it turns out, prophesy.   A good deal of some versions of “prophecy” is simply observation of the obvious, and then speaking it aloud.  I like hanging out with people that are not “just like me.”  If I wanted someone “just like me,” what would we talk about?  Where would the growth come from?  What would life be about?  

I do not think THIS is a good idea.  The metaphor of the Tower of Babel is appropriate here.  

Does this language include the “old” language of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and a sense of modesty about the capacities within human nature that need restraint when it comes to “ruling” one’s fellow man?  I don’t think so.  Rather, we would all soon be playing God, or at least working for or the client of a business that is.  

SCOTOMA (from “Cultural Trance” excerpt, above), unraveled: 

The word “scotoma” (new to me, too, eh?):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotoma 

A scotoma (Greek for darkness; plural: “scotomas” or “scotomata“) is an area or island of loss or impairment of visual acuity surrounded by a field of normal or relatively well-preserved vision.

Every normal mammalian eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot. This is a location with nophotoreceptors, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that comprise the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. When both eyes are open, visual signals that are absent in the blind spot of one eye are provided from the opposite visual cortex for the other eye, even when the other eye is closed. The absence of visual imagery from the blindspot does not intrude intoconsciousness with one eye closed, because the corresponding visual field locations of the optic discs in the two eyes differ.

The term scotoma is also used metaphorically in psychology to refer to an individual’s inability to perceive personality traits in themselves that are obvious to others.

   

     

CULTURAL TRANCE is for individuals who refuse to believe that I have produced a set of voices, are doing so due to human conditioning  

 

 

 

 

 

Translation, that he has special and remarkable powers….

   

(per:       

POSTED BY THEMANWHOSPOKEWITHHISMIND AT 5:18 PM 66 COMMENTS

 

 

 

 

JEREMIAH 9:24 “But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” 2 CORINTHIANS12:1 I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know–God knows. 3And I know that this man–whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows– 4was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.

 

April 4, 2006 12:20 PM PDT

MIT group develops ‘mind-reading’ device

By Candace Lombardi 
Staff Writer, CNET News

El Kaliouby is developing the ESP device for her postdoctoral project as part of the Affective Computing research group at the MIT Media Lab under Rosalind Picard. Alea Teeters, also a member of the group and the ESP project, demonstrated the device.

The project stems from El Kaliouby’s doctoral work at the University of Cambridge, in which she developed the computational model on which the device is based. Like humans, the system determines emotional states by analyzing hierarchical combinations of subtle facial movements and gestures, such as eyebrow raising, lip pursing and head nodding.

The ESP consists of an OQO handheld, a tiny wearable video camera, an earphone and a small vibrating device that can be worn on a belt. The camera can be attached to a baseball hat, or worn around the neck on a stand akin to a harmonica holder. . . .

The ESP camera can be worn facing outward by the speaker, or as a self-cam by the listener. As conversation ensues, the device “mind-reads” for the wearer. When the listener, whom the camera is focused on, begins to exhibit signs of boredom, the speaker is signaled so that she can readjust her behavior to bring the listener back into the conversation.

The device is especially useful to those with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). people with ASC often lack the ability to evaluate others’ emotions on their own. The result is that high-functioning autistics, who might otherwise fair reasonably well in the world on their own, are hampered by a tendency toward misunderstanding and boring others.

Yes, “Boring others” (case in point!) is  a social detriment, unless one is in government, or has taken hostages in some form or another, in which case it’s a moot point.  Literally, “captive audiences” HAVE to take orders, including, to listen.  Blog readers, on the other hand, can bore easily and simply click out of this triple-sized post….

The ESP device can prompt autistic people, who are prone to monologues or repetitive behavior, to ask questions, or give the listener a chance to participate in conversation. The hope is that with long-term use of the device as a self-teaching tool, ASC patients will eventually learn how to read for themselves the emotional responses in others.

According to Picard, the Affective Computing group has received human subject approval . . . 

The ESP is exciting in that the technology has multiple possibilities in terms of use.  (YES IT DOES.  (shudder).  Imagine it in the hands of a kidnapper, helping him detect the emotional state of his victim should she, say, be planning to escape!  Then it seems to me, such people would already be adept at reading such things)  

When one starts mixing MIT with religion, it gets a little hairy. . . . . 

While I don’ t think that the concept of a “cultural trance” is anything too radical a concept, for example, to people in PR, marketing, or who has survived The Holocaust, or lived through a genocide, snake charmers, street preachers, drug users,  self-improvement gurus, or for that matter, those who pay high prices to attend a concert (rock, opera, whatever).  We all need some help to get through this life.  In fact, this is also where the expressive arts begin, I believe, as far back as cave paintings on a wall in France.  The expressive and performing arts are often associated with spirituality and/or religion, and serve a similar purpose.

The site also indicates that he gave a demonstration in Pittsburg last month with a homemade box to prove “the creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake–up call that will in time include the salvation of the entire world.”

Mary Thomas, accountant at J&M auto dismantlers in Pittsburg, near where Garrido set up his revival tent, said he “was always very professional and spoke the word of God whenever he talked.”

Reader alert:  The use of the phrase “the word of God” indicates a belief in it.  How many of you caught this?  At the top of the article, it says neighbors (of whom Erika Pratt appears to be a sample) “proselytized to them about his messages from God.”  The word “proselytized” indicates a non-belief in (whatever is being preached).

Note, the background of Nancy Garrido is Jehovah’s Witnesses, who go door to door and in public proselytizing, as part of their faith and (as I understand it), righteousness.  Proselytizing is not illegal.  Certain other activities, like boxing up women and repeatedly raping them, is.  Not all people who proselytize rape and imprison women.  Not all people who rape and imprison proselytize.  What’s Joe Public and Jane I Dont Know Which Way is Up to think? . . . . .

I can’t answer that last statement for anyone else, but my point is simply to pay attention to language, and when things this horrible are at stake, and are reported afterwards, pay attention to who’s speaking.  The woman who called him very professional may have been part of a similar religious belief system, so to her, Garrido was one of people of this mindset.

That said, incidentally, I”m of the “word of God” mindset, but I do not take it to criminal lengths and I tend to keep my internal radar in the ON position in general, and seek variety of input when in this arena.  I don’t think I could ever join a “church” again.

Garrido had a printing business, making business cards for J&M and others in the area. Tiffany Tran, who runs Furniture Gallery in Brentwood, said she had seen and done business with “Phil the printer” for six years, as recently as last week.

We live in an interesting age, you can do business with people you basically don’t know very well.  OR DID SHE?

Added 09-13-09 at 10a.m.  “Oh dear.”  (See below, where I actually looked up Garrido’s site, and posted from it.  Ms. Tran, per this site, apparently signed a declaration about Mr. Garrido  (better comprehended, if comprehension of such stuff is actually possible, by clicking on this link):

02/24/08, Tiffany Tran, born on 7-26-73, contacted in person at her place of business named Furniture Gallery, located at 50 Snad Creek Rd., Brentwood, CA 94513, phone #(925) 516-3554. Note- When I previously attempted two separate personal contacts there I spoke with her sister Stephanie Tran, showed herthe Declaration in question, and she said that she was present when her sister signed it. She also added that she too witnessed Mr. Garrido’s demonstration and had the same to say about it as her sister did in her Declaration. 
Respectfully submitted, 

Ralph A. Hernandez.

This document is to affirm that I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena. by using a sound generator to provide the sound, and a headphone amplification system, ( a device to focuc your hearing so as to increase the sensitivity of what one is listening to) I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers

FROM THE SITE “VOICESREVEALED.BLOGSPOT.COM”

Also from this site:  Ms. Tran’s affidavit as to Mr. Garrido’s demonstration.

Affidavit 
Dated 5/1/08 

Included in this package are six Declarations as Affirmations confirming several private demonstrations have taken place that allowed others to witness my freedom to speak in a tongue unknown to the medical field, scientific world and the public in general. The signatures that are located in the middle and at the bottom of each page are to confirm the statements of the entire document. Please note: many other people in the Greater Bay Area are also witnesses to this freedom generating a continued list of growth that in time will clearly become public knowledge. 

In order to allow others the freedom to know and accept this ability does exist so they too may confirm it upon request a confidential investigation has been contracted with the following firm; 

Aardvark Investigations & Consulting 
Ralph A. Hernandez 
(Retired career Peace Officer, 33+ years of Investigations experience) 
Ralph A. Hernandez in not affiliated with this project in any other capacity

‘A little different‘

She recalled Garrido as being “a little different” and said he constantly talked about religion and showed her a device through which he claimed he could control sound with his mind.

Which appeared to have an odd set of boxes with in itself — one for rape, kidnapping, false imprisonment (felony crimes, which he obviously knew, having been in jail for them before), another for telling people about God; no apparent contradiction there.  Detachment.  Commiting crimes in one arena didn’t cause trouble, evidently, to the other.  They were boxed up.  Many people in the field of domestic violence talk about “crimes of passion” and recommend “anger management.  My experience with (abuse) wasn’t that it was always a rage out of control thing.  Far from this, many times it appeared to be calculated, to keep (me) within my mental/emotional/psychological “box” of behaviors and places and things that were either permitted or, off-limits, i.e., outside MY particular box.  To keep one on edge, the limits often shifted, meaning, one was frequently on guard when engaging in something that MIGHT provoke, MIGHT be “off-limits” or so forth.  This man not only controlled women, but also sound, including the voice of God.

In other words, detachment CAN be dangerous.  

The concept of mental control is not THAT radical, I’ve seen a recent article from MIT on this, but you’ll have to look it up yourself..

“Some people have a story behind their smile, some don‘t – he did,” Tran said. “He was happy–go–lucky, but you knew there was a story behind it.”

Ms. Tran, if you are there, are you aware that your business card is pasted on this site as having given an affidavit as to Mr. Garrido’s special powers, and endorsed by Aardvark Private Investigations, above?

http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/2008/04/report-jan-20-2008.html

Attorney, University, & Law Enforcement Copy 
This presentation contains six signed & notarized Declarations verifying there is new evidence concerning Schizophrenia that will affect the courts, the medical field and our institutions of higher learning worldwide.    

IN AUGUST OF 2008 AT U. C. BERKELEY’S FREE SPEECH PARK I PUBLICLY DISCLOSED NEW INFORMATION CONCERNING THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS AND PROVIDED A LIVE DEMONSTRATION.

This indeed sounds like a kind of garbled version of something The Pacific Institute, Inc., whose own mission statement sounds as garbled and not too much less grandiose; Mr. Garrido’s just a little more upfront that he (or his truth) is the salvation of the world, forget about Jesus, although borrowing heavily from scriptures is of course helpful in the matter.  

(I went to elementary school when they still diagrammed sentences, in earnest.  Then I went through a violent marriage and now half my post sentences are incomplete, and the post has no style sheet either.  But still . . . . . I pay attention  to word “anomalies.” ).

The words “Voices Revealed” plus his attempts to prove sound can come out of nowhere reads like an attempt to show that what were thought by us “flat-earth, culturally entranced, unbelievers” to be craziness (schizophrenia) might just actually be possible.  I think that MAYBE this was what he was obsessed with proving.  Somewhere, he mentions a woman who threw 3 children into the SF Bay in this context of saving lives.  I’m thinking, MAYBE, he was getting to the conclusion that actual voices (cf.  “the box”) got her to do it.  As opposed to, say, “the devil made me do it.”  And the Secretary of State actually signed the articles of Incorporation for his organization.

What we deserve an answer for:  Why was this dude released?  and, why did they “drop” the comment that there were people in the back yard, when a sex offender was the person accused of this?  They had no problem (once this all came to light) searching the Molino’s home  in a different city, and confiscating some items:  

Cheyvonne Molino, 35, who runs the JM Enterprises yard with her husband, Jim Molino, told the Contra Costa Times that 15 officers entered their Pleasant Hill home around 11 a.m. and searched through their personal belongings, seizing a Macintosh desktop computer as well as DVDs and VHS tapes.

 “They just came in and violated our privacy,” Molino told the newspaper. “I don’t understand why we’re now the bad guys. I mean, they never asked to see if maybe we can help them instead of coming in on me and my tenants. What about my rights?”

 Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement agencies are not required to obtain a search warrant when conducting a search of a person on probation.

>>SO, then this statement (above) to Erika Pratt was false?

Pratt said she had called Contra Costa County sheriff‘s deputies to investigate, 

 but that officers “told me they couldn‘t go insidebecause they didn‘t have a warrant. 

 So they just told him they‘d keep an eye on him.”

I mean, Garrido WAS on “probation” right?  So they could’ve searched without a warrant, and I’m SURE they knew it.  

 Molino said that her husband Jim — who turned 60 on Wednesday — is on court probation, but that it is unrelated to the Garrido case. She told the Contra Costa Times they are “vicitms by association.”

 Lee said the Molinos are not suspects.

 The Molinos did printing business with Garrido, who sometimes visited their wrecking yard with the two daughters police say he fathered with Dugard.

MORAL:  Always run criminal background checks on businesses you do business with.  Then again, apparently JM auto wouldn’t have passed that, either.   

Mr. Garrido wants to tell the world something about the origins of Schizophrenia.  If there is truth to the charges against him, he would definitely qualify in that category.  He is also quoted as being unable to get sexual satisfaction without dominating a woman (told to the arresting officer in about 1976), and I also note, an interview with, I believe a father or brother spoke of motorcycle accident with head injury (i.e., brain trauma) and experimentation with drugs in his (Phillip’s) youth, and that “transforming” him as well.  Head injury can indeed do this.  

So can going through a governmental institution serviced by groups concerned with upgrading the human software as part of a worldwide positive transformation of, well, everyone.  Perhaps some of the gentlemen below could take a lookat some of the neighbors interviewed, or what’s up with Garrido & Garrido, Inc..  Again, “schizo-phrenia” refers to “split-thinking.”  

I talk in this blog about “split personality court orders,” and they are this.  One cannot take them always both seriously.  The court says, a restraining order is just a piece of paper, make your own safey plan; then (or simultaneously) another arm of the courts says, but the children need frequent contact with their batterer parent no matter what, and parents shouldn’t have “high conflict” about this, or whatever takes place.  

It also tells the custodial mothers, and clearly/repeatedly so, that visitation is not tied to child support, and no parent (especially mother) can literally withhold visitation because of unpaid child support.  Then, through groups like Pacific Institute, above, here, and others I post about, and which are receiving federal grants to promote healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, and through child support offices working with incarcerated fathers, etc., they bargain to reduce child support by getting a custody order modified.  Who’s enriched?  The organizations doing this, not the kids. . . . . That’s itself “schizo” (or, simply dishonest) so no wonder people after eyars in this system, or possibly in jails also, they come out totally wired and fired up to get even and prove a point, even if it means stuff like THIS, or worse.  (Yes, when people are killed, that IS worse, although this is surely scraping the bottom of the barrel here).

I DIDN’T withhold visitation.  MY KIDS WERE STOLEN, WHEN HE WAS THOUSANDS IN ARREARS!  Then the child support arrears was retro-actively wiped out (leaving me childless AND penniless, and them without a source of child support from either parent — from him, because he owes me, and from me, because the back was broken economically in the process of custody switch).  Another thing I can definitely say is, from afar, it appears that at least ONE is confused, quite understandably so, and this comes out as anger — towards the absent parent.  When sense is lacking, because, being deprived of accurate information on the situation, it seems anger will do.  What a waste of time, and talent.  

So, Language is a key, and an indicator.   I am a “bear” {which causes the forbidden “conflict” at times} about language when interacting, as I’m forced to, with people who cooperated in removing the restraining order (temporary respite) situation from me, and it really does matter, folks!

Perhaps later Jaycee may recover and tell us some of the truths of her experience, if she chooses to, and ONLY if she chooses to. 

Chronicle staff writers Matthew Yi and Matthew B. Stannard contributed to this report. E-mail the writers at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com, jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com, hlee@sfchronicle.com and kfagan@sfchronicle.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/27/BA4N19EJ35.DTL#ixzz0QwwPOIS1

POSTED 9-12-09 (hence “911+1” ),

and really this was the original main point.

I simply had included the article on the Dugard case as part 1 of 2.

This woman explains how the mental limits can be just as strong and confining as the physical.  Once a person is conditioned (first, usually by trauma, drama, threat, shock, as in kidnapping), then they can be made to believe that limits exist which are unreal.  This is then easier for the kidnapper.

Colleen got out the moment someone told her that the ominpresent “Company” didn’t exist.  Once she realized that fear was gone, she got on a bus and went home.  however, while she believed it was still there, she was even able to visit home, and go back to horror.  

I hope that this article will be read with appreciation and understanding by those who have NOT been abused, threatened, falsely imprisoned, or anything like it.  Try to understand how things work.  It may help you to help others, including to forgive captives for not getting free sooner, and help them when they do.  It might also help you to listen to your instinct and find out HOW to act, the next time something looks “off” in a situation.  Observation plus instinct.  We live in a world when we’re taught to let others be our instinct and give us permission to listen or not listen, judge or not judge.  These cases should help us overcome that where necessary.  At the bottom are some photos of this woman, who is beautiful and poised now, and able to help others who have been through the situation.

September 2, 2009 6:30 AM

Exclusive: Woman Imprisoned in Coffin for 7 Years Has Special Message for Jaycee Dugard

Posted by Paul LaRosa

 
NEW YORK (CBS) Whenever I hear about a story like Jaycee Lee Dugard’s – kidnapped at age 11 and held captive for 18 years, bearing two children with her kidnapper – I inevitably think of Colleen Stan because if anyone knows what Jaycee went through and is about to go through, it’s Colleen. 

Photos: The Search For Jaycee 
Photos: Jaycee Lee Dugard Found Alive 
Photos: Inside Jaycee’s Terror Tent 

Colleen is not as well-known as Elizabeth Smart or Patty Hearst but, if anything, her story is even more incredible. Everyone wants to know why someone like Jaycee or Elizabeth or Patty, all of whom had some apparent freedom, did not flee their kidnappers. Well, Colleen can tell them why. Her story is horrible but instructive. 

I met Colleen in 2003 when Elizabeth Smart was found alive, and I’ve never been able to stop thinking about her. Colleen was held by a husband and wife for seven years as a slave for sex and just about anything else the couple desired but here’s the kicker – for much of that time, she lived in a coffin-sized box underneath the couple’s bed!! 

A book was written about Colleen by a prosecutor in the case and its title fittingly is “Perfect Victim.” 

When I met Colleen, she seemed well-adjusted. She came to the interview with her daughter, a young woman, and then calmly but articulately spun out her incredible tale. 

Colleen was a 20-year-old hitchhiker in 1977 when she was picked up by a young couple with a child in the back seat of their car. What could be safer, she thought? But the husband, Cameron Hooker, was a sexual sadist who took Colleen to the family’s isolated trailer and raped her. The abuse got worse and worse. 

“He liked to whip me with whips,” she told CBS News. “He had electro-shocked me. He had burned me. He had done many things.”

Colleen explained that Hooker had warned her that, if she said a word about what was going on, his “men” would storm into the house and kill her parents and her and anyone inside the instant she opened her mouth. 

“Because of the threats that people would come right in the house and people would be hurt,” she told Van Sant. 

“And you believed him?” 

“Yes, I did.” 

Hooker’s control over Colleen was that complete. She went back to the box, and it was only because of Hooker’s wife that she was eventually rescued. Hooker’s wife went to the authorities at the behest of her minister. Hooker was eventually tried and sentenced to life in prison. His wife was never prosecuted under the theory that she too was abused and scared to death of her husband. 

Sounds like that might have been understandable.

Photos: The Search For Jaycee 
Photos: Jaycee Lee Dugard Found Alive 
Photos: Inside Jaycee’s Terror Tent 

Colleen recovered after years of therapy. She is now an office manager in Northern California. I caught up with her Monday and asked her about Jaycee Dugard. Colleen said she’d been trying with no luck to get in touch with Jaycee’s mother, and had met her mother on a talk show some years ago. 
Colleen was of course concerned about Jaycee’s state of mind. “I read that she felt guilty but she should not feel that way,” Collen said. “You can’t be with someone 18 years and not have an attachment. I hope I get the opportunity to talk to her and tell her she did nothing wrong. She did everything right. She’s alive. 

“I want to work with these women (Jaycee, her mother and her daughters) and help them readjust,” Colleen said. “It is not easy. After being away from the world for 7 1/2 years and all of a sudden you’re thrown back in the world and it’s hard, very overwhelming. My heart just goes out to these women who come out of these situations. It’s hard to adjust to your family situation.”

Hooker renamed Colleen “K” and constructed a coffin-sized box with holes in it and instructed her to climb in. He then shoved the box under the couple’s bed every night and kept her as his slave for the next 7 years. 

Colleen felt she had no control of anything. She said he told her, “I’m in control and Colleen no longer exists. You are now K. You are my slave.” 

Hooker wrote up a contract for Colleen that “basically said that he owned me body and soul.” 

At one point, Hooker handed Colleen a gun. “I didn’t know if it was loaded or not and he told me ‘this is to see if you’ll do what I say,’ and he told me to put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, and I did,” she said. 
Everything about this story is shocking and you might think that Colleen would do anything in her power to escape, and that is where her story intersects with Jaycee’s because people who are totally under someone else’s control – even given the opportunity to escape – do not. The brainwashing is complete. We as free individuals cannot understand it because we’ve never been in their situation. 

Some 3 1/2 years into Colleen’s captivity – living in a box, being raped repeatedly – her abductor Cameron Hooker took her home for a visit with her family and left them with her overnight. She never said a word about what was going on with Hooker, and in fact went back with him the next day to live in the box again for another 3 ½ years. 

CBS News Correspondent Peter Van Sant was incredulous: “Why then didn’t you tell them ‘I’ve been kidnapped, tortured?’ Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call the police and say, ‘Get here immediately. I need your help, I need your protection?’” 

{{I have been many years outside the battering relationship I was in formerly.  I still get, from people that did nothing to intervene, and probably to make themselves feel better, and more innocent for not helping, blaming for not leaving earlier.  It is minimized, and I am supposedly “over it” even when many aspects of the abuse, in this case (no one ever went to prison in my case, unfortunately, I say) were continuing.  I try to understand their point of view, but the converse is not always true.  Victim-blaming is actually a self-solacing activity.

I used to try to become “normal” again and to a degree this is desirable.  But there is no “past” to go back to before which one has undergone certain things.  The brain also begins to work somewhat differently at times, which is biologically normal; for example, if PTSD comes up, that can be difficult, and is disheartening, but there are things I am going to notice, and possibly respond to, that people who have not been mugged (by an intimate), stalked, or repeatedly traumatized, etc., might not.  When we are then discussing a similar situation, for example, something may be characterized as “over-reacting” but for that person, it isn’t.  . . . There are some pros and cons to aspects of how one is changed by certain experiences.  At times, I have learned to “translate” or try and understand why people may not “understand.”  Would it be ideally normal to go totally back to normal for Colleen and Jaycee, if that were possible?

Maybe not — for one, while “normal” both of them were kidnapped.  I imagine they are a little more cautious, as are their friends and relatives, than before.  }}

What most shocked Colleen when she came out of captivity was something you might not expect. She was surprised at how ungrateful everyone was. “I was shocked,” she said. “People had nice jobs and houses and had plenty but they seemed so unhappy. They wanted more. I was coming out of a situation where I had nothing, and being exposed to these people who had so much and were unappreciative of it and complaining, I thought ‘My God why don’t they see how blessed they are?’ 

“It was overwhelming at first that people don’t take advantage of what they have. All I came home with were the clothes on my back. I had nothing. I was blessed with family and friends. 

She received therapy from Doctor Christopher Hatcher from San Francisco, who has since died. Colleen considers him her savior. “He helped me to understand that I didn’t do anything wrong. I did everything right. People will ask you why you didn’t do this or that and they don’t know. They were not in that situation. 

“I had a lot of support from my family but they didn’t know what to tell me so Dr. Hatcher helped me understand that people in this situation switch to survival mode. You have to do what you have to do and say to get through this situation and you shut down your emotions. I had to learn how to turn those emotions back on. 

{{That’s beautifully said, and it’s true, too.  As we run through life and notice people whose emotions ARE shut down, it might be something to also keep in mind.  Perhaps there’s a reason they are.  Anecdotal:  Initially (and also at other times), when I would protest a form of abuse, there would be a punishment, to dominate, retaliate and establish that protesting abuse was UNacceptable.  There were other times (this is talking DV in a marital situation) when I purposely stayed calm, flat-faced, did not react, or express what I think.  My “me” went into hiding, for safety.  Then I was criticized for being emotionless.  When I say “Criticized” that means, namecalling, etc., some of it pretty nasty.  I guess he needed someone reactive in there to get a feeling of power from the abuse.  

There is a term for this (I think more re: childhood abuse) called “DID” — Dissociating, and literature around it.  It’s a survival thing.  I did not go through anything close to what this woman did — but she survived, and looks wonderful now and is able to speak out to someone else and help (see photos, below).  

One book (person’s story) I read (reading other’s stories at one point — this is AFTER leaving the in-house abuse situation — seemed to gave me hope), she describes and attack and said, “immediately my mind split in two.”  I remember this from one of the first most severe ones.  The attack was happening, and part of my brain was compareing the two:  “THIS — husband — THIS — husband” and trying to connect the two concepts.  They didn’t connect.  (I’d already hauled back in for trying to to out the front door and wrestled to the ground, pregnant, was being sat on and slapped across the face.  It all happened very fast.  I remember so much of it, even from many years ago).

}}

“I would like Jaycee to understand that (her recovery) will not happen overnight. She’ll carry around guilt, shame, anger and it will take years. I never got angry until long after (Cameron Hooker) was arrested. I did not feel safe until he was convicted because I was still afraid he would get off. 

“It’s perfectly normal to go through these emotions.” 

I asked her the question everyone always wants to know: why didn’t you escape when you had the chance? 

“People don’t understand all the threats made against me, my family. There’s a lot more to it than just walking away. When you’re sexually abused, these things solidify the fact that if you don’t do what I say, I can take your life. I thought, ‘What if he catches me when I try to escape?’ It wasn’t like I never thought about these things. I did but I never felt safe to act out on them until his wife came to me and said, ‘We have to get out of here.’” 

Colleen is 52 years old now, and on August 9th, she celebrated the 25th anniversary of the day she was set free, enjoying a cake and celebration with her recovery group. The cake, she said, was as sweet as life is now. 

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One of the worst things people can do to someone coming out of trauma is judge them harshly for not getting over it fast enough.  If it’s dramatic and awful enough, news headlines, mercy seems to come.  But there is so much in just daily life, “routine” assault, battery, and long-term domestic violence.  I still have family members scolding me for being “stuck in the past” (this happens to be actually a dodge attempting to derail a different conversation).  Generally speaking, if you haven’t been through it, you’re just not in a position to judge.

Another thing not to do is go with the sympathy plus patronizing, i.e, making decisions for the person on the basis that because of her EXPERIENCE of domination and abuse, she just needs someone else to “take control” and dominate how she recovers, leaves, gets out, proiritizes WHAT area of life is most important, etc.  What happened to me was that after years of negligence, it seems (at least) that the same people who weren’t competent to name and act on “danger” when it slapped THEM in the face metaphorically (as it did me, literally), and it wasn’t just hands, there were indeed weapons, which was also known – – the experts moved on in because I happened to be in a weakened state initially.  Then I began to assert some boundaries and found this recovery resented.  Kind of like a codependent need to know the person that was needy and in abuse.  The, “She has a backbone and is utilizing it” wasn’t in the vocabulary.  This saddens me, to have to fight a similar fight, again, and with different people.

The “experts” who aren’t can be every bit as abusive as the captors.  It is necessary for others involved to “think outside the box” also.  

I rejoice that these women got out.  

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Photo: Colleen Stan today. 

Colleen Stan at age 29, shortly after she was released. 

Photo: Colleen Stan’s 20th birthday. She was abducted soon after.