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Two Missing Boys Found Alive in Mo. Home

CurrentAffairs

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BEAUFORT, Mo. (AP) - A 13-year-old boy who vanished from the gravel road near his home five days ago was found alive about 60 miles away in a suburban St. Louis home, along with a 15-year-old boy missing since 2002, authorities said Friday.



My Way News - Two Missing Boys Found Alive in Mo. Home
 
Yes, it's very bizarre.
A neighbor said he'd seen Shawn Hornbeck (the 15-year-old kidnapped four years ago) on numerous occasions, but that he figured Michael Devlin was his father. The neighbor said Shawn Hornbeck never appeared frightened or as if he were trying to get away. The neighbor said that occasionally the boy pitched a tent and camped out in the yard.
I don't know what to think... whether it's a case of brainwashing or some sort of psychological manipulation, or whether these boys (or at least Hornbeck) were actually runaways who went with and stayed with Devlin willingly.
The initial reports say they both appear unharmed, but that doesn't mean they haven't been threatened or sexually abused.
I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about this story as new details surface.
It reminds me a little bit of that Elizabeth Smart thing a few years back, which was just flat-out bizarre.
I was never entirely satisfied that the whole story came out, in that case... not that we (the public or the media) have the right to the whole story. As long as the police have it, that's good enough for me.
 
bizarre seems an appropriate word choice indeed.
 
I live just across the river from Missouri and this dominated local news.

Ben had been missing since Monday when the school bus dropped him off, Sean as you know had been missing 4 1/2 years.

In the past, neighbors said they had heard a young boy screaming in an apartment, but, mistakenly, sent police to the wrong apartment.

This guy, Devlin, who has been charged with kidnapping, ( pending other charges) has a history of sexual abuse.

The police went to the apartment complex to serve a warrant on another resident, and another man asked the police if they were there to investigate the white Nissan pickup...a similar pickup was seen leaving the area where Ben was last seen.

Soon, 6 more police cruisers were there, blocking the pickup and finally, finding the two boys.

This ended incredibly well, but I'm afraid Sean, who has been held for over 4 years, will need years of therapy, while Ben may be able to put this incident behind him, much quicker.
 



Link for this?
I've not yet read any article that mentions "screaming" and "sexual abuse".
 
1069 said:
Link for this?
I've not yet read any article that mentions "screaming" and "sexual abuse".
Click to expand...


Sorry...this was reported by StL local news stations by interviews with other apartment residents, and interviews with local police officials. I'll see if any of the local stations have reports, and I'll post a link.

Here's a link...the part about the screaming is about 2/3's the way down the page. Supposedly, this Devlin has other names he goes by, so the history of sexual abuse may have to wait for further details.

STLtoday - News - St. Louis City / County
 
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I think UFO's are to blame.......:roll:
 
Curiouser and curiouser:

link

Apparently the younger boy, the 11-year-old, Ben, is ready to go back to school.
He was not, it has been ascertained, physically or sexually abused by kidnapper Michael Devlin. He was left alone in an apartment with 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck for most of the 4 days he was kidnapped, while his kidnapper worked two jobs; Devlin apparently had little contact with him beyond telling him that if he left, Devlin would "kill him and his whole family".

Shawn Hornbeck, on the other hand... by all accounts, has been free to come and go as he pleases for years.
He has been posting on the internet for at least two years, authorities said today... usually under the name "Shawn Devlin" (his kidnapper's last name). He has posted on various forums and myspace pages as "DevilDevlin" and "ShawnDevlin".
He has posted pictures of himself on various sites, with a pierced eyebrow, a pierced lip, and three rings in his ear.
He posted on his parent's own website, a website for missing children, which bore his name. He posted under the name "Shawn Devlin".
What he posted was: "How long are you planing (sic) to look for your son?"
He posted a partial picture of himself, his eyebrow piercing.

Okay, here's my prediction.
Want to hear my prediction?

Shawn Devlin was a runaway. He was either abducted by Devlin four years ago or went with him by choice.
Either way, he stayed with him by choice.
Why? Because the man was never home, and Shawn and his friends had the apartment all to themselves. Because he didn't have to go to school. Because Devlin bought him a nice bike and a cool game system. Because he was allowed to dye his hair strange colors and get all the facial piercings he wanted. Because he could stay out as late as he wanted.
What else does any boy want, at fifteen, besides freedom from authority, freedom to do whatever he wants?

My guess is that Shawn was not molested by Devlin and did not have a sexual relationship with him (although Devlin might or might not have wanted that). Shawn had the freedom to leave. I think Shawn would've left, or told, if unwanted sexual advances had been foisted upon him by Devlin. I think Devlin is a lonely, psychologically disturbed man who wanted a boy. A sort of quasi-son/ quasi-friend. I think Shawn came along somehow and fit the bill. I think maybe Devlin got tired of Shawn after awhile (as evidenced by the long hours he spent away from home, working both a day job and a night job). Maybe Shawn had started blackmailing him. Maybe they just didn't get along anymore. neighbors report hearing a lot of arguing coming from the apartment.
Either way, though, Devlin couldn't just ditch Shawn, couldn't kick him out of the apartment, couldn't tell him to go home to his parents. Not without getting busted for kidnapping him in the first place.
Shawn was probably getting ready to leave on his own (although not to go back to his parents), or at least making noises about it.
So Devlin kidnapped another boy to fill Shawn's previous role in his life, a boy who was the same age Shawn was when Devlin first got him.
This is all just my personal speculation.

So far, authorities are speculating that Shawn was "a victim of brainwashing" or was "held captive by terror" or some such.
But his taunting message/ clue on his parents' own missing child website is a tip-off for me.
He knew his parents' anguish. He didn't much care.

So anyway, that's my theory. I could be totally off-base.
But trust me, I am intimately familiar with the minds of rebellious teenage boys, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fifteen-year-old boys wouldn't have been happy with the set-up that Shawn Hornbeck had, over at Devlin's.
No threats would've been required to keep some boys there; just buy them a six-pack of beer, a pack of smokes, and a quarter ounce of pot once in a while; buy them the latest video game system; let them get tattoos. It's like that island in Pinnochio, where all the bad boys went, and got turned into donkeys.

I've also known a few older men, weird, creepy, socially awkward loners like Michael Devlin (who was, by all reports, a nice guy; had worked at the same pizza parlor for twenty years, had no criminal record. Was quiet and socially inept. Weighed 300 pounds. Wasn't in the greatest health and had recently lost a toe to diabetes), who seek out the company of young teenagers for whatever reason. Who bribe teenagers to be their friends, to hang around with them and keep them company. Their ultimate goal is not necessarily to have sex with these teenagers. Maybe they just to like to look at them. Maybe they're just lonely, and don't feel comfortable around other adults.

But whatever the case... I'm looking at the clips of Shawn and his mom, reunited, and I'm looking at his posture and his body language, and I'm thinking, he's not going to be with her long. He doesn't want to be with her. He's going to leave again, as soon as he can.
That's what I think.

And this Michael Devlin guy did a horrible thing, even if my theory is correct and he didn't abuse either of the boys. The trauma he put those families through is unimaginable. But it's also possible that if Shawn Hornbeck hadn't been holed up safe in Devlin's apartment all these years, piercing his lips and diddling on the computer, he might've been somewhere else, like on the street getting hooked on heroin and murdered.
At least he's alive.

I'm probably just biased.
I don't like Shawn Hornbeck, for what he did to his mother.
Of course, psychologists are explaining that away too; he was in a state of psychological bondage... he was subconsciously trying to leave clues by trolling mom's website, etc.
I don't know. Maybe they're right.
Time will tell.
 
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"Shawn... had passed up numerous opportunities to make his getaway, it emerged, including being allowed out to ride his bicycle in the street outside Devlin's apartment, and trips to the shops. He told neighbours that Devlin was his father and, when they asked about his mother's whereabouts, became emotional and told them that she had died in a car crash.

He spotted the "missing" posters and photographs of himself that had been stuck to benches outside local grocery stores, along with a computer-created image of what he might look like now, having spent more than a quarter of his young life away from his family.

"There have been some instances where he has been aware of the efforts going on to find him. The only comment I've heard from him so far is that the age-progressed photo was an insult," Mr Akers said.

His face had been plastered in the windows of local shops and businesses, his photograph thrust before television cameras at every opportunity by parents who never gave up hope that he was alive. Yet for four years, no one in the neighbourhood where he was being held, a 30-minute drive from his family home, made the connection."


:rofl

The missing child posters Shawn passed daily featured an "age-progressed" image of himself that he found "insulting"... so he decided to troll Mom's website rather than contact the police and go home.
Nice.
"Stockholm Syndrome", my grandma's arse. :?

link
 

This is a very interesting theory...I wonder...

Let's say that the boy ran away on his own, had met the Devlin guy under some other circumstances, and told him that he hated his parents, they were mean to him, abused him, etc. Let's say the devlin guy offered him a safe shelter, and that there was never any sort of sexual abuse. How much would he be in the wrong? Granted, the new kid seems to offer some evidence that he broke the law, but if it werent for that, I wonder what a jury would say.
 
1069 I completely agree with you! I was thinking the same thing but I never really went in depth; everything you say makes sense and clears up the whole thing. I don't think Devlin had sexual relations or if he did it was almost like a rent payment for letting the boy stay.
 
sex in exchange for free rent? And you guys are actually discussing whether Devlin might not have been in the wrong? :shock:
 
CurrentAffairs said:
sex in exchange for free rent? And you guys are actually discussing whether Devlin might not have been in the wrong? :shock:
Click to expand...

No of course he was wrong in doing it, but what does sex in exchange for free rent have to do with it being right or wrong?
 
CurrentAffairs said:
sex in exchange for free rent? And you guys are actually discussing whether Devlin might not have been in the wrong? :shock:
Click to expand...

I don't know about "sex for rent"; that wasn't part of my initial theory.
I theorized, if you recall, no sex.
Not that any of us really know, at this point; your guess is as good as mine.
Certainly I am not discussing whether Devlin was "in the wrong"; his actions were horrendous.
I think having your child missing- especially for four years- would be almost more devastating in some ways than knowing for sure that your child was dead... because not a minute would go by that you wouldn't wonder if your child was still alive out there somewhere, being tortured or victimized in some unimaginable way.
Did you see those pictures of Shawn's mother? That poor woman looks like a corpse. I can't imagine what she's been through.
And Ben's family, too; although thankfully their agony only lasted four days, and Ben appears to have been returned to them healthy and intact.
What a nightmare.

No, Michael Devlin is a horrible person. Even if he is only guilty, in Shawn's case, of harboring a runaway... he let that family believe that Shawn was dead for years, when really he was thirty minutes away the whole time.

They could've... I don't know. Gotten the message to her somehow, that Shawn was still alive, even if he didn't return home right away. It would've alleviated her suffering somewhat- probably a lot- just to know that he was alive and growing up, somewhere in the world.

I hope Michael Devlin is incarcerated for a very long time, preferably life.
But I also have enough perspective on the matter to be extremely grateful that he didn't kill either one of those children... that he was the man he was (terrible as that is) and not somebody even worse.
If that makes sense.
 
I agree with 1069........its really weird and I don't understand why he didnt leave after all these years.

I bet that family will have a hard time healing over all this and I pray the boy adjusts to his family.

they certainly need professional help and everyones prayers.
 

Actually, from what I heard on the news, the first boy was supposedly told that if he left, his family would be killed, but I do not know if that really happened, or if that is speculation by the media. Under those circumstances, if the boy felt powerless, I could see him doing nothing to free himself. Fear makes people do strange things.
 

It's possible; here's some new information, however, that would seem to bolster the "runaway" theory:

"Authorities also had contact with Shawn over the years; they simply failed to connect him with the boy whose face had been plastered on posters and milk cartons around town.

Shawn’s friend Tony Douglas said that on three occasions, police stopped the two for being out beyond curfew. Officers gave the boys a ride home, unaware of Shawn’s real identity, Tony said.

The Post-Dispatch cited another encounter between Shawn and police that occurred Sept. 29 when an officer stopped the boy, who was riding his bike about 11:20 p.m., about a mile from Devlin’s apartment.

According to the police report, Shawn identified himself as Shawn Devlin and gave a birth date of July 7, 1991 – 10 days off his actual birthday. Shawn told the officer he was riding to the apartment after visiting a friend’s home.

“He was wearing dark clothing and didn’t have reflectors on his bike,” Glendale Sgt. Bob Catlett told the newspaper. “The officer stopped him to find out who he was. He said he was Shawn Devlin, and we had no reason to doubt him."

link

Another article states that Devlin (the kidnapper) once summoned the police to the apartment because of an ongoing problem with a neighbor parking in his parking space. The police came out and took a report from Devlin; Shawn was there at the time.

My understanding of "Stockholm Syndrome" is that it takes isolation to brainwash someone... and major psychological trauma such as torture doesn't hurt, either.
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to "brainwash" someone to the extent that they'd collude in their own "captivity" by lying to the authorities in order to avoid rescue, when you've only moved them to an apartment 30 minutes away from their own home; when they're allowed the freedom to roam the streets at all hours of the night with their friends, causing them to get picked up by the police for curfew violations.
I'm no psychologist- merely an armchair one.
But that doesn't make sense to me.

On the other hand... while I can see many teenage boys wanting an opportunity to live- for a while- somewhere where there's no school, where there isn't much adult supervision, where there aren't many rules and they can basically do whatever they want... it's hard for me to imagine a child that age voluntarily having no contact with his family for over four years, even though he knew they were desperately looking for him.
Not unless:
1. Something was very wrong in his family to begin with, or
2. He became frightened when he saw all the "Missing" posters and heard about himself on the news, and was afraid he'd be in a lot of trouble if he contacted his parents or tried to go home again.
or, I suppose, 3. Maybe Devlin brainwashed him and he had Stockholm Syndrome. But he doesn't seem to fit the criteria for it; I think isolation really is a key component, and from what I've read he's never been isolated, never lacked for contact with friends, neighbors, and the outside world.
It's very puzzling.
 
My understanding of "Stockholm Syndrome" is that it takes isolation to brainwash someone... and major psychological trauma such as torture doesn't hurt, either.
Click to expand...
Yes and that isolation can only be just a matter of hours--we see SS in the vast general public and many studies have shown that the two-thirds of people are capable of just obeying a "authority figure" even if they just meet them as seen in the famous and classical Pych shock-wrong answer experiments.

Take a person getting paid and protected by law on what they do and you get abuse; you see it everyday yourself at work; take this same populace to elect and vote for the likes of Bush and Clinton and the rest of the theives in Congress and you see why this teenage boy was not different than most DP posters and the Average american public. Walking order taking comatosic sheep.
 


Hm. I'm skeptical.
I have some inside knowledge of how well teenagers respond to "authority figures"; if it were that easy to brainwash people, I would've amassed an army of mindlessly obedient, brainwashed robot-slaves by now, and used them to take over the world.
Or somebody would've.

I suppose a lot of it has to do with susceptibility, though; just as some people are very suggestible and vulnerable to coercion and such, maybe some people are far more vulnerable to Stockholm Syndrome, and it takes less effort to break their will.
It's ludicrous to suggest that all people are so easily broken, though... to believe that, one would have to disregard the fact that many people endure horrifically traumatic experiences, and have throughout history (rape, child abuse, long-term abusive relationships, extended battles with cancer, wartime situations, imprisonment, slavery, torture) and not only survive but emerge stronger, not only psychologically intact, but tempered by fire.
Perhaps this is not the norm... people who survive these experiences and emerge psychologically unscathed are exceptional people, role models, heroes. But neither is it the norm, I don't think, for people to crumble psychologically under the slightest pressure.
I would think most people's reaction to extreme stress would be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
 
Ah. Well, this new turn of events certainly throws a monkey wrench into my theory:

CHILD PORN AT MISSOURI KIDNAP LAIR

I still hope, from the bottom of my heart, that Devlin did not molest those children.
I think it's possible that he had not gotten around, at least, to molesting Ben, who was rescued after only four days.
The revelation that Devlin was a pedophile makes it less and less likely that he didn't molest Shawn or coerce him into some sort of sexual relationship.

I had hoped, very much, for an entirely happy ending to this.
 
Here is some more evidence that points to a defeat of your theory.

Mo. Couple Say They Think Son Was Abused

BREITBART.COM - Mo. Couple Say They Think Son Was Abused
 
I don't buy your theory, 1069. Shawn has said that he was terrified and that Devlin told him that if he left or told that he would kill him and his family. Remember, Shawn was abducted (the latest story I hear is that he was taken at gunpoint) when he was 11 yo...not 15. He had a lot of time to be intimidated and brainwashed by Devlin.

His body language shouts pain and anguish to me, someone who has been forced to live "within himself" for a long time. The look in his eyes is haunting. Poor kid, he's got a lot of healing to do.

The police have emphatically said that Shawn was abducted by Devlin and was definitely held against his will.
 
Well, since I came up with my (at that point- to my knowledge- original) theory, Bill O'Reilly and a bunch of other Conservative right-wing loonies have adopted it, which is more than enough to make me wish to retract it, just so I don't have to be on the same side as them.
If they think Hornbeck was there by choice, then I don't.

 
Can't say I blame you for that....:mrgreen:

I know, it seems strange that he stayed.....but fear is a powerful tool that these abusers use on kids. It works, and makes them believe they are powerless. This man needs to be put away permanently, so no other kid can be victimized by him.
 
1069: Hm. I'm skeptical.
Click to expand...

Milgram experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia will lead you to enlightenment and the links therein if you seek.


This experiment was just done recently again and the same results came up; it was shown on national tv.
 
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