He kidnapped her and kept her as his sex slave. When she was not sexually servicing him, she “lived” in a coffin-like box beneath his bed in sunny, sunny California. His wife knew all about it.
No, I am not talking about the ordeal of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped in 1991 when she was 11-years-old and who has just been rescued after an eighteen year captivity in the northern California home of Phillip and Nancy Garrido.
I am talking about 20-year-old Oregonian, Colleen Stan, who in 1977 was kidnapped by Cameron and Janice Hooker, buried alive in a coffin-like box and enslaved for seven years in southern California. The Hookers were a well-liked couple who had two children. Cameron was a 24-year-old bespectacled mill-worker at a lumber company. Janice was the kind of wife and mother who sewed, crocheted, entertained friends and who eventually worked at a nearby convenience store.
Here’s what the “average, mild, well-liked” mill worker did to Colleen Stan.
He sadistically raped her, but he also handcuffed, blind-folded, hung her by her wrists, gagged her, repeatedly near-suffocated her, chained her to a rack, whipped her if she cried out, starved her, beat her–and always kept her chained, both hand and foot, and confined in the box. It worked. After six months, Colleen was “broken.” Thereafter, Cameron allowed her to become the family’s house slave too.
Hooker was an S and M pornography magazine addict. In one such magazine, he had read about a Contract with a Slave to be enslaved and he had Colleen sign such a contract. It was all legal in his mind. But he continued to have Colleen wear a slave collar, forbid her to wear underwear, forced her to address him as “Master” and Janice as “Ma’am”–and he continued to hang her by her wrists, choke her into near-unconsciousness–again and again. For his pleasure. He forced her to continue to sleep in the box. He convinced her that if she ran away, that an (imaginary) “Company” of slave owners and traders would cut off each of her fingers and then crucify her very slowly; they would also kill her family.
Janice Hooker? Well, Janice (plain, bespectacled, with unkempt hair) wanted to stay married, wanted to please her man, but could not endure or satisfy his enormous sadism. So she agreed to a substitute, a sacrifice.
Christine McGuire, who prosecuted Cameron (but not Janice) Hooker, together with Carla Norton wrote a very chilling book about the case titled Perfect Victim. Hooker was found guilty and sentenced to 104 years–not long enough.
(These days, if he were a Libyan terrorist with the blood of hundreds on his hands, he might go free for “compassionate” reasons.)
In both California cases (Jaycee’s and Colleen’s), the wives were passive enablers, perhaps also brainwashed, or terrified. Sadly, predictably, women are often complicit in the savage sacrifice of other women. I write about this in my book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.
In both cases, the innocent victims were brainwashed too. Colleen learned not to scream and, for years, did not run away–not even when she ostensibly could. Jaycee (now known as “Alyssa”) was discovered handing out religious literature together with her captor and their two daughters, now aged 11 and 15. And on the Berkeley campus! I wonder what made the Berkeley campus police, who are both female officers, suspicious, vigilant?
Was Garrido, a convicted child pedophile, acting in an inappropriate manner towards the two young girls? Or was it the fact that he and his female captives were all handing out religious literature? Berkeley is the kind of place where pro-Palestinian and pro-Jihadic literature is far more common than Bible tracts. Garrido must be crazy!
So, America now has its own non-incestuous version of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian monster who kidnapped, raped, impregnated, and kept his daughter Elizabeth and their seven children in captivity for 24 years. No doubt, from Garrido’s point of view, he is a cut above Fritzl since Garrido only did this to someone else’s child.
Were the Berkeley campus police any less vigilant, Jaycee might have ended her days as a captive sex slave. Her daughters, too. Apparently, a neighbor knew that Garrido was a registered sex offender. Three years ago, a neighbor reported seeing young children on Garrido’s property. The police investigation was cursory, the sheds/tents at the back of the property were never investigated.
For the record: Janice Hooker ultimately, reluctantly, testified to the truth and against her husband in a court of law–but in a very small, frightened, barely audible voice and she tried to hide both her jealousy of the more attractive Colleen and her own complicity. Colleen eventually had a child, but her teeth, hair, and spine were severely damaged, she had trouble sitting up unaided, and she remained afraid of going out.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido have now been charged with 29 counts of forcible abduction, rape, and false imprisonment. They each face multiple life sentences. Garrido’s brother, from whom he is estranged (he is estranged from his father too), has described Nancy as a “robot” zombie, similar to one of Charles Manson’s girls. (No, I don’t think this excuses or justifies her criminal complicity). Phillip Garrido is now also being investigated as a possible serial killer, responsible for the deaths of at least ten women.
Folks: What must we learn from these horrendous stories?
First, that there are many more such stories out there. Children and adult women are routinely kidnapped in epidemic numbers. Most are trafficked into sex slavery for profit; apparently, some evil men keep one or two at home, for themselves. We, the people, rarely intervene or rescue the enslaved girls or women.
Second, there is absolutely no cure for pedophilia. None whatsoever. Thus, if we allow pedophiles out after serving their time, we place society and children at great risk. And, if we confine them in psychiatric institutions, trust me: They will sexually prey upon anyone who is vulnerable, physically smaller. I was an expert witness in a case like this.
Third, when last I looked, studies all suggested that rapists, incestuous fathers, and sexual sadists could all pass for “normal.” Yes, there are exceptions, but in general, functioning sociopaths or psychopaths plan their abductions carefully, strategically, cleverly. They are quiet, well-liked, often quite charming men.
But for the grace of God, we are all at their mercy.
AFTERWORD: In both the Jaycee Dugard and Colleen Stan cases, people could not understand why a girl was not more like a boy, why a woman was not like a man. People believe that a boy and a man would fight and/or flee as soon as he could. Not always true–but if so, girls and women are trained to please and obey men, not to fight or flee from them. But it’s far bigger than that. When you are kidnapped and torturously confined, isolated, sexually violated and, because no one rescues you or hears your screams, you come to believe that your very survival depends upon how well you please your captor. Thus, the captor becomes your master and your redeemer.
When people leave prison after many years, they are not sure footed. Ex-prisoners do not venture far, they are “afraid” of large, open spaces and too many choices. Leaving prison, leaving captivity, is a process.
I have written about brainwashing in several of my books and, more to the point, about women’s desperate or opportunistic collusion with highly aggressive and sadistic men.
Think about Hedda Nussbaum and her responsibilities as a mother in the case of the murdered Lisa Steinberg. Nussbaum was battered, brainwashed, shattered, and perhaps for this reason, was not held criminally liable. But she was morally liable for allowing her addiction to Joel Steinberg to render her incapable of rescuing her illegally or non-formally adopted child, who was, in reality, Michelle Launders’s biological daughter.
I will write more about this in the future. I see that a number of readers believe that I am somehow “blaming” women in this article. Others believe that I am somehow “letting women off the hook.” Nothing like a diverse readership.
One more thing: Where do I get the wild idea that the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of women is pandemic? Surely, Sir, you jest. Where do you think the girls and women in brothels and at sex slave auctions, come from? Why would the United States finally pass a bill (The William Wilberforce Trafficking in Persons Bill) were the matter not beyond serious?
And then there’s the unknown number of cases of incest, the under-estimated number of rapes–enough. For now.
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