Comment by Diana regarding Jaycee on 02 Sep 2009 at 9:51 am

Dear Karen,

As a woman who suffered so could you give any words of comfort to all those who may wish to rush in to help Jaycee with all that she suffered being kept captive for eighteen years. I heard she cried when her abuse was arrested. I don’t understand why she cried for someone who stole her child hood? Can you explain how you felt when you heard her story? What advice would you give for her therapists? Thank you, Karen! Your wisdom and faith are an inspiration to me.

Diana, OK

Dear Diana,

I’m sorry to hear the awful news about what happened to Jaycee. I felt nauseated.  I can empathize with her.  Being kept prisoner while being controlled by one’s abusers is something that is not only horrific but incomprehensible.  It’s my hope that Jaycee will be given the best of care, a slow and steady treatment by one individual therapist, and not be the subject of too many.

Whether removed from one’s home or abused in one’s home, the victim lives within her own mind, a prison that keeps one from trying to escape.  Maybe I could’ve run away if I only knew more?  I’ll never know.  Many questions continue to cloud my thoughts.  Who would’ve believed me?  Where would I have gone?  How would I have known what to do?  And what would the consequences be if I told someone?  Fear kept me paralyzed.  I believed my abusers’ threats of killing my brothers, my mother, and me.  I believe Jaycee may have felt that same way.

Jaycee did what she had to do to survive. What started off as intolerable abuse somehow became a tolerable way of life for her.  I believe she had to let go, accept a new sense of reality, and stay compliant to her abuser in order to survive.  It’s a very complex coping mechanism.

Please, to all concerned, do not overwhelm this woman or her children.  Allow her privacy to heal in peace.  Time and again she will need help.  Please be patient and not make her the subject of your humiliation.  She is a victim of abuse.  There will be no immediate answers.  Don’t ask.  Remember she was eleven when abducted, not yet a woman, not yet even a teen.  I understand.  Hope all of you will, too.

Give her a chance to breathe, for the first time in a long time.

Thank you.

Karen