Victimizing the Victim?

The case of Shawn Hornbeck’s kidnapping and eventual rescue on January 12 has prompted many interesting questions about the responsibility of reporters and of journalism as a whole.
Since Shawn was found, the media has not let up on play-by-plays of everything from his reunion with his parents to how he will make up the four years he lost to the hands of his kidnapper. Every parent with a missing child hopes for an ending like this – that their child will be found, safe and alive. However, the media changed its story from “the lost boy is found!” to “why didn’t he get out sooner?” in a matter of days. Instead of simply being thankful that he was found, along with another kidnapped boy, reporters and pundits immediately began questioning why Shawn hadn’t tried harder to escape his captor. ‘Why didn’t he call police,’ they asked after it became obvious he had been left alone while his kidnapper worked at the local pizza shop. If he had been kidnapped against his will, the wondered, why hadn’t he told a neighbor? Unfortunately, even more details emerged that the media decided to use in their case of trying to prove that Shawn could have escaped, but did not. For one, Shawn recently posted a comment on the website his parents constructed as a tool to help find him. Why didn’t he write where he was? Why didn’t he tell his captor’s name? Just yesterday, various media outlets broke the news that Shawn had dated a young woman during the time he was kidnapped. Some have asked, why didn’t he tell her he had been kidnapped years before? Shawn even ran into police ten months ago, who questioned him about a stolen bicycle, and he never asked for help.
Plenty of experts have noted that kidnapping victims become mentally bound to their captors, citing examples of other victims who felt indebted to the very person who took their life away.
But none of us were there. How are we to know what kind of violent, emotional, or sexual tactics Shawn’s captor used to scare him? We must not forget that Shawn was a highly impressionable 11 year-old at the time of his kidnapping. Some reports have stated that the kidnapper told Shawn his parents did not want him anymore. If this was the case, is it really so hard to understand why Shawn wouldn’t attempt to get away?
I think there is another issue that comes into play in the case of Shawn Hornbeck, and that is one of gender. Did the media raise such questions when Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped, held against her will and then found after almost a year? If my memory serves me correctly, people did speculate on the details of her kidnapping, but much later and not in the mainstream media. Was Shawn accused of not trying to escape his captor simply because he is a boy who ‘should’ have figured out a way to get away? Since Elizabeth was a young girl, did people take sympathy and see her as more of a victim than the way they currently see Shawn?
These questions are not to be taken lightly when such a serious event as a kidnapping is the topic of conversation around the water cooler this January. Perhaps it would serve us all well to think about ourselves and our loved ones in this kind of situation – maybe then we will go a little easier on each other.

Maureen Fisher
TJR Spring 2007