Pippin1

 

Mia Pippin

Professor Malcolm Campbell

English 1103

February 9, 2015

Topic Proposal: Long Term Abduction and its Long Term Effects

Introduction/Overview

The topic of my research will be looking into the before and after of the lives of long

term kidnap/abduction victims, especially those that were forced to live with their captors.

Within the group of those that were forced to live with their captors I am particularly interested

in the victims that were forced to play out fantasy roles such as a victim’s child or spouse.

Though it is clearly evident that every kidnap victim experiences trauma to an extent, it is these

special cases that are more likely to develop into Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome can best be described as the psychological state when a hostage

begins to feel such strong empathy towards their kidnappers that they will defend them and make

excuses for them when they are abusive. Stockholm syndrome is something that has always been

around, but it was named after a bank robbery that took place in Stockholm, Sweden. During this

bank robbery there was a group of people that were held hostage for a period of 6 days and

during this time they all bonded with their captors and defended them after they were released.

According to the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System, 8% of kidnap victims do develop

Stockholm syndrome and during my research I plan on evaluating the main difference between

the people that do develop Stockholm syndrome and those that remain full of disdain for their

kidnappers.

Pippin2

 

Over 90% of my preliminary research has been conducted online. Even though the topic

of long-term kidnap victim had always interested me, my previous knowledge had been mostly

restricted to the news reports and short tv interviews of recently found kidnap victims.

Additionally my major is Criminal Justice so there are multiple teachers that are in the field that

may be able to help me with my research from an investigative standpoint. For my online

research I looked at multiple Wikipedia pages about the countless different kidnap victims I

found. I also used many news reporting websites because most of them had at least one to two

stories about the kidnap victims to go along with their interviews. For additional resources I plan

on watching two movies, I Know My First Name Is Steven and The Elizabeth Smart Story,

which are both reenactments of the true stories of Elizabeth Smart and Steven Stayner.

 

Initial Inquiry Question(s)

How do long-term kidnap victims re-adapt to life in society after they are rescued from

their kidnapper? What is the tipping point that makes some kidnap victims develop Stockholm

syndrome and not others? What other mental disorders have developed primarily from instances

of kidnappings?

My Interest in this Topic

My interest in long-term kidnap victims developed when I was very young. Being that I

am a Criminal Justice major, true crime has always been a fascination. My interest really peaked

when I was in middle school and my mother told me about a friend of hers that had been

kidnapped when she was 15, along with another girl in our home town Mt. Shasta, CA and her

childhood hometown of McCloud, CA. My junior year of high school this story became relevant

Pippin3

 

to me again when they finally caught them man that had kidnapped the girls, and they had

discovered one of the bodies in a cave on our old family land in McCloud. It was amazing to me,

although I first was completely interested in trying to comprehend the mindset of the kidnapper;

I slowly shifted to trying to understand just how these girls must have felt mentally and

emotionally during the entire ordeal.

Next Steps

To gather more information on the mindset of a long-term kidnap victim, I plan on going

directly to the source. To do this I am going to read 2 to 3 books written by these kidnap victims,

including A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard which I have just finished reading. I also plan on

taking multiple trips to the UNC Charlotte library to see if they have any of the magazines with

interviews of these kidnap victims or any psychological journals that discuss the mental state of

abused people or people with Stockholm. There are also multiple online sources including

latimes.com, which has an entire section on the story of some of these victims. I believe that any

of the first hand accounts from the kidnap victims are going to offer me the most information for

my research.