By Tim Robertson
There are too many kidnapping stories strewn across the news and far too few of them have a happy ending.
Fortunately, two young boys were rescued from a St. Louis suburb recently, despite one being missing for nearly four years. Oddly, the second was only missing for about four days.
What’s strange is that a fourteen-year-old boy could live in some stranger’s apartment for four years, get lip and ear piercings somewhere along the way, report his bicycle being stolen directly to the police and identify himself with the same surname as the kidnapper.
This just doesn’t sound like the story of a an unhappy, unwilling kidnapping victim to me.
It’s partially a byproduct of the CNN-ushered cable news era when ratings have become much more important than actual journalism. In this case, it seems that someone decided the best “story” would be the happy reunion of a divided family.
However, despite what commentators said, when Shawn Hornbeck was reunited with his family, it didn’t appear to be a joyous occasion.
It actually looked like a fourteen-year-old kid who didn’t really like his parents, had been avoiding them for four years, and felt like he should act nice in front of video cameras.
The strangest part of this story is that it seems pretty obvious that the youth was compliant in the “kidnapping.” I’m not suggesting that a youth between the ages of ten and fourteen can legally consent to being abducted, but somewhere in the endless line of press conferences and interviews details are missing.
One example is that Hornbeck’s father is a convicted sex offender who spent three years in prison in the mid 1990s. Another is that ten months after his abduction, when Hornbeck went to the police to report that his bicycle was stolen, he neglected to mention that he was being held against his will.
I can’t pretend to know what might go through the mind of an abducted youth, and many other pressures may have led to his “voluntary” confinement, but the real news story isn’t how wonderful it must be to be reunited with a lost child. The parents are being revered because of their fortune, but the fact that they may have contributed to the boy’s reluctance to return is being neglected.
Of course, none of the public, myself included, knows anything of the relationship between Hornbeck and his family, but that seems like a question the media should be answering. Who decided that America needed a happy ending, even if it meant sacrificing the truth?
I’m happy for the family and the child, but I’d like to know the rest of the story. The one we’re being told simply doesn’t make sense.
Tim Robertson is a graduate student in the department of political science. E-mail him at [email protected].
