Brylee Schwartz Mrs. Maier English 10 May 2024 Stockholm Syndrome & The Effect On its Victims True crime. As of March 2024, approximately 50% of Americans enjoy the genre of true crime (Justice, April). These people have most likely consumed enough of the media to know what “Stockholm Syndrome” means. Dictionary.com defines Stockholm syndrome as, “an emotional attachment to a captor formed by a hostage as a result of continuous stress, dependence, and a need to cooperate for survival.” Jaycee Dugard, a survivor of child abduction, wrote of her horrifying experiences in a memoir titled, “a stolen life”. In the memoir, she described Phillip, her captor, and how he manipulated and controlled her during her 18-year captivity. Her memoir proves…show more content… While hitchhiking, she encountered a couple with a baby, which made them seem trustworthy. So, she accepted their ride, unknowingly sealing her to a fate of darkness for the next 7 years (Sweeney, 13). Her captor's names were Cameron and Janice Hooker, who are, thankfully, now apprehended. A few miles out from where Collen was originally picked up, Cameron put a knife to her throat, tied her up, and put a box over her head, concealing her from the world. She was then brought to the Hooker’s house, where she was stripped, hung from a rack, beaten, then placed in a coffin-like box. This vicious cycle would continue for a heinous amount of time, until the 8-month mark of her captivity, where Cameron forced her to sign a contract that wrote her as his sex slave. (Egan, 3) This mix of rape, physical abuse, and sense deprivation were all used by Hooker to make Colleen the perfect sex slave for him. After witnessing the years of abuse, Janice Hooker had a change of heart and helped Colleen escape from her husband's clutches. Who knows if Colleen would still be alive today if she had not done that? Despite all of the examples and evidence of it, some people do not believe in Stockholm syndrome's
