[TXnMA]

Not condemning -- just trying to understand. With the means to escape obviously at hand, it seems that some other factor was keeping him in a situation that we, as adults, would deem to be intolerable.

Please don't confuse analysis with condemnation...

[Palladin]

Good post. There is a time when all teenagers rebel. Why didn't Shawn rebel against the man he identified to everyone as his father?

Also, by age fifteen, conscience is formed. Did Shawn not know it was wrong to kidnap a child?

I know all about the brainwashing and the Stockholm syndrome. Pimps do the same thing to the young girls they lure into the trade. They brutalize and rape them into submission. Then they sell them on the streets. Most of these girls stay with the pimp. The few, the courageous, the rebellious ones leave, even at the risk of being brought back and killed.