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To: Halls

Then I suggest you wake up and smell the coffee... There's more than enough "Devlin the Devil" bashing going on, and the questions of how the boy could have great access to email and phones and NOT try to call home are valid...


12 posted on 01/19/2007 11:48:03 AM PST by theDentist (Qwerty ergo typo : I type, therefore I misspelll.)
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To: theDentist

It is called fear and unless you know anything about how bad it can be than I suggest your the one who needs to wake up and get yourself educated!


14 posted on 01/19/2007 11:49:34 AM PST by Halls (i love my boys!)
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To: theDentist

Try educating yourself. Obviously you have never been mentally and sexually abused. You judge a boy that was taken against his will at the age of 11 by a psycho, from the comfort of your easy chair. Shame on you.


78 posted on 01/19/2007 1:30:19 PM PST by BonneBlue
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To: theDentist
the questions of how the boy could have great access to email and phones and NOT try to call home are valid...

The questions are valid, and they're also pretty easily answered. Pedophiles -- at least the ones who don't get caught early and often -- are shrewd and manipulative. They have a doctoral-level, instinctive rather than scholarly, understanding of child psychology.

They know how to use terror, sympathy, affection, shame and dependency alternately to beat a child's mind into the shape they want it to be. "Stockholm syndrome" is a start, but it's far too glib, and besides the Stockholm hostages were all adults when their ordeal began. A child's mind is much more malleable. Someone who's a victim long enough forgets that there's anything else -- pain gives way to numbness.

Just to be clear, what follows is speculation. If Shawn was abducted at age 11, and the other boy was also abducted at 11, it seems likely that Devlin has a favored "type." When Shawn got too old for him, he tried to use Shawn to recruit another boy. That is not unusual behavior for pedophiles. It is also not uncommon for a victim to break out of his brainwashing when he's asked to become an accomplice.

I don't know the particular dynamics of what happened to Shawn during his captivity, and I don't want to know. That's for him to discuss with his pshrinks. I hope, though I'm not hugely optimistic, that he can recover -- some of the years when the boy was molded into the man he will be were spent in one of the most f-ed up environments imaginable. Other folks have mentioned Stephen Stayner, whose story illustrates what a hard road it is back from there.

It is tempting to ask why he didn't use the phone, or e-mail, or smoke signals or carrier pigeons to call for help. It's tempting to imagine what you would do in that situation, but it's worth resisting the temptation for one important reason -- you're not eleven.

I'd like to think that if I were captive for a year, or two, three or four, or ten, or twenty, I would never give up on getting word out and getting away. But that's a personality i developed in the loving arms of my family. Shawn's childhood was constructed of a whole 'nother set of building blocks.

You could also ask why many dogs don't leave the yard when they're not on a leash or many horses don't leave the paddock when the gate is open. Devlin and bastards like him don't use dank cells or physical restraints, because they don't have to. They shackle the will first.

91 posted on 01/19/2007 1:49:19 PM PST by ReignOfError
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To: theDentist

You are truly sad.


101 posted on 01/19/2007 2:01:01 PM PST by surelyclintonsbaddream
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To: theDentist

Fear is something that should not be underestimated. How many people are terrified of going to, ahem, the dentist and I haven't read too many cases of dentist abducting patients, raping them and Heaven knows what else. How many kids stay in abusive homes and get beat by their fathers daily? Why don't they just leave? No one knows what that "man" said to Shawn, no one knows what was done to him over the past 4 years, no one knows what Shawn saw when he first was abducted, perhaps the boy he was replacing, maybe even worse.

How do you think you would do if you were captured by an al qaeda group and raped and tortured for 4 years? Many argue women should not be in combat because they could get raped if captured. Yet people question a boy who at age 11 was most likely raped and probably was so traumatized that he never emotionally developed another day and probably even regressed.



123 posted on 01/19/2007 2:31:06 PM PST by WV Mountain Mama (2007 resolution: learn how to rail a berm.)
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