"It wasn't as if Devlin was some anonymous drifter. He was from St. Louis. Some of his family members live in town. He was a 1984 graduate of Webster Groves High School. He worked at an Imo's pizza parlor in Kirkwood.
Devlin's family said they were bewildered by the news, saying Friday they had no idea that Shawn was living with Devlin.
It was a mystery, too, why Shawn hid with Devlin and did not try to contact his family. Devlin's co-worker at the Imo's, who didn't want to be identified by name, said a boy called the restaurant early Friday afternoon and said he was looking for Devlin.
The worker said he noticed on the caller-ID that the call was from Devlin's home, and asked the boy who he was.
He said the boy told him, "'I'm Shawn Wilcox. My father is a friend of Mike Devlin.'"
The co-worker said the call came in while FBI agents were questioning Devlin in Imo's back parking lot.
One expert said Shawn's case might be consistent with Stockholm syndrome, in which victims cope by identifying with their captors. Joe Carver, a clinical psychologist from Ohio who studies abusive relationships and works as a psychology supervisor at the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, said that in cases such as Shawn's, "There's a tremendously unfair power discrepancy between abuser and captive."
Gee, ya think?! Wonder how many years he went to school to discover that?
There is outrage and then there is total outrage. Questions about why the boy did this or that are totally unacceptable.
Transferring responsibility for this child's plight from the evil doer to the victim is beyond the pale.