(tense music)
- I'm Ana Garcia,
and this is "Beyond the Headlines: Surviving Abduction."
- I remember being put in the trunk
and having our wrists taped.
We were blindfolded and shut in a closet.
- He placed me in the pit of an outhouse toilet
and left me for dead.
- [Ana] Shocking firsthand accounts
from the women who survived.
- He said, "Now, I can blow your (bleep) brains out,
or I can slit your (bleep) throat right open."
- I spent so much time being afraid, feeling alone.
- So many people feel shame
and all of these horrific things.
- [Ana] And the ultimate revenge?
Not to only live and tell their stories, but to thrive.
- It's a part of our story,
but he didn't get to ruin our lives.
He ruined his life.
(tense music continues)
- The thought of being abducted, taken from your life,
your family, your friends,
and then thrust into a world of abuse and neglect,
unsure if you will ever be released, is a nightmare.
In 2021, more than 6,500 girls and women
were abducted in the United States.
Most kidnappings are typically committed
by someone close to the victim,
but the cases that we are going to examine
in this hour explore a different kind of terror,
abduction and imprisonment by a stranger.
We'll meet a teenager who developed a twisted bond
with her abductor.
And a mother and daughter
whose faith kept them going through 53 days
of captivity and torture.
A young woman describes how she survived a modern-day case
of virtual abduction and sexual abuse.
And finally, we'll see what it means
to live a life beyond the trauma and beyond the headlines.
When New Hampshire teenager Abby Hernandez
was abducted in 2013, she grew close to her captor,
gaining enough of his trust
to find out his real name, Nate Kibby,
and to even learn about his history and his personal life.
This bond, while clearly toxic,
would ironically save her life.
- My name is Abigail Hernandez and in 2013 I was kidnapped
and held captive for nine months.
I was 15 years old.
(tense music)
I grew up in the Mount Washington Valley,
New Hampshire.
I had a pretty good childhood,
but I didn't have like the most outstanding social life.
I was kinda lonely in school.
I was kidnapped on October 9th.
I had a pretty normal day at school.
I had these leather new boots
that you needed to break in, preferably with socks,
and I didn't have 'em.
So I was walking home and my heels felt raw.
They stung really bad and I was like,
gosh, I still have a little ways to go.
And he pulled over.
The door just opened right in front of me
and he was holding it open and he says, "Need a ride?"
I just thought, you know,
he's your average Joe or whatever,
and that's the wrong mentality to have.
He said, "Where you headed?"
And I said a sandwich shop near my home.
I don't want grown men knowing where I live.
I guess I was smart enough to know that.
He looked very serious, no expression.
He said, "Do you mind if I stop by up here real quick?"
So I was like, this is kinda weird, but yeah, yeah,
that's okay.
And he parked so far away
and the car was facing away from the store.
I immediately got kinda, oh no, something's happening.
Like he's planning something.
I reached for the door
and then I feel this heavy object on my leg
and I realized it's a gun.
And he said, "Now, I can blow your (bleep) brains out
or I can slit your (bleep) throat right open.
If you try to do anything to escape, I will kill you."
And then he threw handcuffs on me.
And then we just kept driving.
Was thinking to myself, he's taken me far away,
which means I'm not coming home,
which means he's gonna kill me
and bury me somewhere probably.
(tense music continues)
And then he brought me
into what I now know is a shipping container
and it smelled like gasoline and weed.
And it was just really cold.
There were tools everywhere.
My first thought, to be honest, was he's gonna chop me up.
I was really terrified.
I was praying to God like, anything else is okay,
just please don't let him like mutilate me.
One of the very first things I asked him was,
"How come you're doing this?"
The main reason according to him was
that his girlfriend broke his heart
and he lost all faith in women
and wanted to hurt one of them.
During the first week,
he was talking really quietly and he was crying and he said,
"You know, I'm not proud of this Abby."
He said, "You know, I'm sorry."
And he just explained to me that he was in a tough position
where if he let me go,
then that was the end for him,
but he also couldn't keep me
and he didn't wanna kill me.
- Dear Abby, I believe you're out there somewhere,
watching and listening to me right now.
- He had brought me to the bathtub
so I could not be blindfolded,
and so he could hold his phone in front of me
so I could see my mom.
I think that was the first time I cried when I was there.
It was just hard to see the state that she was in,
you know, having lost her child.
- It is my hope that you can reach out to me
and I want you home with me.
- He said, "I'm thinking of having you write a letter.
Let your mom know that you're okay."
He was saying out loud what I was supposed
to be writing down
and I wrote it down and I had fingernails
and like how I have now,
and I carved into it,
"White man, blue eyes, white car, north."
Anything I knew about him, I had etched in there.
Hours pass, and I'm sitting there in the closet.
Finally he comes back and I hear the door slam
and I'm like, oh no.
And he said,
"I hope you know I'm not playing (bleep) games."
And he said, "We'll have pillow talk later."
Pillow talk was me getting stunned by a stunned gun
for like 20 minutes.
And then he left me alone.
He just told me that if I had given him away,
it would be better to shoot him.
So he had given me a gun
and told me to shoot him and I didn't.
I was just like, I'm not doing this crazy stuff.
Please be normal.
He definitely did care about me
and I cared about him at the time.
It was like a one-on-one cult.
I was alone for long periods of time.
I would just try to make it go by.
And then when he was around,
we would talk and I would get that human interaction
that felt good.
You're looking for any kind of emotion out of this person
because they're doing things that are so inhumane
that you're looking for humanity in them.
And when you see it, it's like, thank God.
He said how he felt like school was a prison
and the teachers were there to, you know, boss him around.
I kind of felt the same way about school too.
So I really just tried to have open conversations with him
and I didn't really try to manipulate him.
I thought it would be great,
like if he came out of this rehabilitated
and that I helped with that.
In the beginning he told me, "I'm gonna put you to work."
And there was just
like a big old bucket of weed stalks there.
And he explained to me like how to do it.
I was looking at the weed
that he was trimming and he looked up at me
and I couldn't see him,
but I could tell that he was smiling and he was proud of me.
You know, weed happened in the beginning.
Time went on and then we were making counterfeit money.
He had paid a prostitute with a $100 bill we had made
and she got caught.
She told him, "I told him everything.
I told him who you are and that you gave me fake money."
He told me the cops are coming over, search my stuff,
you can't be here.
And we went for a little car ride.
There's this road called North-South Road in Conway.
It's kinda like a back road in the middle of nowhere.
We just stopped and he said, "Get out."
- Coming up,
Abby's twisted bond with Nate Kibby
persists beyond her release.
- I felt like I had killed somebody.
I had one job to do and so I just felt so bad.
According to the FBI,
a small percentage of kidnapping victims experience
what is known as Stockholm syndrome,
developing a psychological
and an emotional bond with their captor.
Nine months after Abby Hernandez was freed,
she still felt the need to protect her abductor
from the police.
(tense music continues)
- He told me that I needed to come up with a story
if he were to let me go.
And he said,
"This story needs to be as far away from me as possible."
He said, "So you know, I'm white.
You say the man is Latino or Black.
I'm tall. Say he's short."
But like the cops aren't stupid,
especially with a 15-year-old girl.
You know, they knew something was up.
They were like, this is a (bleep) story.
- This has been an unusual case from the get go for us.
- But then you know, time went on and my mom,
I could see the stress on her
that they weren't finding the guy.
And I just told her everything.
I felt like I had killed somebody
because I really felt like
he's gonna live a inhumane life now in jail.
And I felt like that was on me.
I had been let go and I had one job to do.
And so I just felt so bad.
He was arrested, arraigned.
I went to the arraignment.
Everybody told me not to, but I wanted to see him.
You know, when I was there, I actually read the book,
"The Scarlet Letter."
When I came out of it,
I kinda felt like I was wearing a scarlet letter.
There were rumors that like, she lied, she lied,
he hasn't been convicted yet.
Sometimes you're just trying to live life
and people will throw stuff at you,
dirty looks, phrases or whatever.
I hope that no other survivor of abuse
has to hear random people give their opinion.
A couple years later,
he pled guilty.
It took years,
years outta my life,
you know, unfortunately, where I was kind of in a daze.
I went into hair school when I was 17.
I started working with people
and then that's how I met my current boyfriend actually.
And I realized men aren't supposed to be like him.
That's not how people should relate to each other,
through manipulation and making somebody feel bad and
you know.
By coming forward and telling my story,
I wanted to set the record straight.
I always carry it with me in a little way,
but there are days where I don't even think about it.
You know, life is pretty normal for me now.
I have a son and he is probably the best thing
that ever happened to me.
I'm just thankful to be here and have made it
to be old enough to have a kid.
I don't know.
And I guess I just have these memories
that I still feel kinda young to have,
but ultimately it's made me who I am
and that's okay.
(tense music)
- Following Nate Kibby's conviction,
Abby Hernandez gave an impact statement in court,
forgiving him for what he did
and even thanking him for setting her free.
Abby's trauma bond with her abductor
may have saved her life,
but a young school teacher named Mary Stauffer relied
on a very different kind of bond
to survive her captivity and abuse.
(tense music continues)
In May of 1980, a man kidnapped Mary
and her young daughter, Beth, at gunpoint,
and held them hostage for 53 terrifying days.
During their shared imprisonment,
Mary and Beth relied on their unshakable religious devotion
and love for each other.
But would it be enough?
(tense music continues)
- [Mary] My name is Mary Stauffer
and my abduction happened when I was 36 years old.
- [Beth] My name is Beth Stauffer.
I was abducted with my mother when I was eight years old.
- It has been very important for me to share my story.
It helps me to verbalize
how God was with us through the bad and the good.
(gentle music)
In 1980, we were gonna go to the Philippines
as missionaries to plant churches and to teach the Bible.
The day that we were kidnapped,
I had taken Beth to the beauty parlor
because the next Wednesday,
we were supposed to get on the plane.
After Beth got her hair cut,
we came out and walked to the car.
And I saw a man walking toward us,
but I didn't think anything about it
because I thought maybe he just wants
to ask directions someplace.
So I unlocked the car, opened the door,
and by that time, the man was by us in the car.
And I saw that he had a gun pointed at Beth.
That was a horribly terrifying moment for me
because he was threatening not me, but my daughter.
He forced me into the car first
to slide over on the driver's side, and then Beth,
and then he was in the passenger's side,
always with his gun at Beth's side.
And I didn't dare do anything that would risk her life.
(tense music)
- The memories come back like snapshots.
I remember sitting in the car with him
in the passenger seat, mom driving the car,
him having the gun at my side,
being scared, him yelling,
trying to tell her how to drive, where to go.
I remember being put in the trunk
and having our wrists taped.
- When we were in the trunk of the car
and the little boy who just happened to come on the scene
had been grabbed and put in the trunk with us,
and later taken out.
We didn't know where he was taken.
(tense music continues)
- Late at night when he switched us from our car
into his moving van,
being taken to this house and we were blindfolded.
We're brought into a closet and shut in a closet.
There's a lot of confusion, a lot of disorientation.
We've been hearing from Mary and Beth Stauffer
about their terrifying abduction by a stranger in 1980.
On the second day of captivity,
Mary learned the man was Ming Sen Shiue,
a former student of hers whose schoolboy crush morphed
into an unhealthy obsession.
Confined to a closet in constant fear
of what might come next,
Mary turned to her faith for strength.
(tense music continues)
- Beth was in the closet during the times that I was raped,
so she didn't see the rapes happening,
but she knew something terrible was happening to me.
When I'd come back to the closet, she'd say,
"Mom, are you okay?"
And we'd talk about how the Bible said
we're to treat our enemy, you know,
love your enemy and all those things.
And I thought, love?
What I'm feeling is more like hate.
- Mom did a great job during the kidnapping
of sheltering me from the horrors she was facing.
I could tell she was upset when she would come back
and see me in the closet, but I didn't know why.
- Sometimes I'd be so discouraged,
day after day, no rescue, nothing.
And life seemed to be worse and worse and worse.
There were times when I questioned my faith,
but Beth was sensitive to that.
- I grew up as a pastor's kid
and I learned about stories from the Bible
about God rescuing people.
- One day she said,
"Mom, do you think God is gonna send his angel
to open the door for us like he did
for Peter and the other guy?"
And in my deep heart of hearts,
I didn't think it was gonna happen that way at all,
but I don't want to destroy the faith of a child.
And so I said, "Well, he certainly could do that,
but he might choose a different way."
Which he did.
(tense music)
The day that God made a way for us to escape,
we were no longer stuck in the closet.
We were able to sit in the bedroom, which was truly better.
And that particular day,
he had chained us to the closet door.
He had steel cable with loops on each end,
and he had put that around Beth's waist
and fastened it with a padlock.
And then he had a bicycle chain encased in plastic
around my waist and I was padlocked to the cable.
And then that cable was fastened around a hinge
on the closet door,
the closet where we had been locked inside
for all these weeks.
And then I noticed that on that door
there were only two hinges,
one at the top and one at the bottom.
No middle hinge.
So I went over to the door and grabbed the edge of the door
and grabbed the hinge pin,
prepared to pull for all I was worth.
And the hinge pin just lifted out
and all of a sudden the door was open at the top.
And our cable could come through.
After our cable came free,
I put the door back together again.
So we got up, I took her hand,
we went to the kitchen where we knew there was a telephone
and we called the police.
(uplifting music)
- The day we escaped, stepping outside that door
was the first time we really did anything
in 52 days of our own volition.
The air smelled sweet.
Like I remember the feeling of the sun.
There's nothing like just feeling the freedom.
- When we were taken to the sheriff's office
and I first saw my husband, Irv, and our son Steve,
and the first thing I noticed was
that his pants were getting a little short
because he had grown during that 7 1/2 weeks
that we were in captivity.
It was just so marvelous to hug each other.
I knew at some point I needed to let Beth know
what was happening all the times
when she was locked inside the closet
and I was outside the closet.
I thought, there's going to be lots of news.
She needs to hear this from me.
And so I did tell her before the trial started,
I just said, "Well, you know, Ming was raping me."
- I actually don't remember the exact moment she told me
that she had been raped during the kidnapping.
As a child, I didn't understand really what that meant,
but as I got older and I understood
more of what it meant,
I was actually really angry.
(tense music)
- In 1980 and 1981, there were two trials.
One was for the kidnapping of Beth and me
and the other was for the murder of Jason Wilkman,
the little boy who just happened to come on the scene
that day when we were in the trunk of the car.
Jason had been grabbed and put in the trunk with us
and later taken out.
Nobody knew it, but he had been killed.
That, for me, was the worst part
about the whole kidnapping experience.
It was in those hearings that I was attacked
in the courtroom.
Our abductor jumped up from his place at the defense table
and ran and grabbed me by the neck from behind
and held a knife to my face and said,
"Get back or I'll kill her."
And in the process of that scuffle, I was cut on my face.
(tense music continues)
Our abductor was found guilty.
The judge gave him a life sentence
with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Having spent that 7 1/2 weeks with him, he said,
"Even if I get put in prison for a very long time,
when I get out, I'll go after you.
And if you're dead, I'll go after your kids."
In 2010, there were some hearings
to determine whether he would be eligible for parole.
When parole was denied, we did feel relief.
We were very satisfied that he would remain incarcerated.
My feelings for Ming today are pretty much the same
that they have always been.
We pray for him.
We hated what he did, but we didn't hate him.
- I feel sorry for Ming Sen Shiue.
His choice that day to walk up
and put a gun to my side and take us
was the first step in a life of living in prison.
52 days later, we escaped.
It's a part of our story,
but I got to go on and live a great life.
Got married, had kids.
- We were able to finish our missionary career
and retire back here to the States.
We were able to see both of our children marry.
- He didn't get to ruin our lives.
He ruined his life.
- No matter what has happened,
no matter what anybody has done to you,
that isn't the thing that defines you.
There is healing, there is love,
and you can even leave the resentment behind
and just go on with your life.
(tense music)
You might think that
abduction only applies to the
physical act of kidnapping,
but with the internet,
social media,
and modern technology,
abusers are now able to threaten
and control others virtually
through their phones or computers.
One example of virtual abduction is known as sextortion.
That's when someone threatens
to digitally distribute sensitive information
or images in order to extort sexual favors,
sexual images, or money.
Ashley Reynolds refers to the man
who exploited her over the internet and social media
as an abductor because he, in Ashley's words,
abducted her from being able to live her life fully.
When she was just 14,
Ashley's MySpace account became her nightmare
when she fell victim to sextortion
at the hands of a stranger.
- Going into my sophomore year of high school,
I was 14 years old.
MySpace was top priority at the time.
My profile was on private,
but I did get a random message from someone.
I had no idea who they were.
Their name on MySpace was Captain Obvious.
The subject line in the message was in all caps,
and it said, "I have naked pictures of you.
Open this."
I didn't even bother opening it.
I deleted it and moved on with my day.
Memorial Day weekend comes and everyone's sitting out back.
That's when I get a message on my phone and it says,
"I have naked pictures of you.
Why are you ignoring my message?"
(phone beeping)
The messages start coming in more and more.
And he goes, "If you don't send me seven naked pictures
of yourself right now,
I'm going to send what I have to all of your friends."
At first, it seemed so farfetched
like I was trying to find different answers
as to how he could have naked pictures of me.
Maybe I left my webcam on.
Maybe he hacked into my computer.
When you're being told something over and over,
I've got these naked pictures of you,
and you're getting threatened over and over again,
you start to believe it yourself.
Everyone was sitting at the patio table talking,
and that's when I did have to excuse myself.
After receiving several messages in a row
and him not taking no for an answer.
(eerie music)
I went to the restroom
and that's when I took those seven naked pictures.
I thought that once I sent those pictures,
it would be over with and I could go on with my life.
No one would have to know.
But once I sent those, that's what he used as leverage
from then on out.
It started off with the seven pictures,
but it was turning into over 60 plus pictures
every single night.
And if you can imagine what kind of poses I had to do
and things, you know, I had to do to myself,
I had no idea even existed at the time.
I was basically a puppet.
I had to do whatever, according to him.
(eerie music)
I was dealing with this morning, noon, and night.
I would block him on MySpace.
He would create a new account, message me there.
Every time my phone would go off
or I'd see I have a new message on MySpace,
it would be a pain in the gut.
My whole body would just start shaking.
I call this person my abductor because, to me,
it feels like a form of kidnapping,
like a virtual kidnapping.
This went on for roughly about six months.
I was at a youth group club after school.
And it was in the middle of it,
and I remember I get a text from my mom saying,
"Your dad and I are coming to pick you up."
I knew something was off.
We got home and my mom points at the screen and she goes,
"What is this?"
What she's pointing at is one of the threads
from my messages, my chat with this guy,
I just dropped to the floor
and I started screaming and crying
because I knew that they knew
and I didn't know what was gonna happen from there.
I remember my dad wanting to call the cops
and do something any dad would wanna do.
My mom was trying to calm him down,
trying to calm herself down.
And she told him to hold off.
Let's not call the police.
(tense music)
And that's when she pulled up online
National Center Missing & Exploited Children.
I canceled my MySpace, like
National Center Missing & Exploited Children told me to.
And I gave it a few months and I started to grow weary.
I just wanted to be normal.
I wanted to fit in with my friends.
I was sad seeing everyone,
being able to have fun on MySpace, talk on MySpace,
and that's when I decided to make another profile.
And I shouldn't have, but I did.
After deleting her social media accounts
to escape an online predator,
14-year-old Ashley Reynolds eventually returned
to the internet
to find that her nightmare was far from over.
- Once he found the second MySpace, he was very angry.
The threats came in more about sending off my pictures.
I still ignored it.
And a little bit of time after that,
my mom was in the living room.
She remembers hearing me screaming.
"He did it.
He did it. No!"
And I was crying.
I was bawling my eyes out.
He did send a couple pictures out to a few of my friends.
Not one person looked down upon me.
No one did.
They were all there for me.
They all supported me the entire time,
but I still had to walk on eggshells,
being afraid of everything around me.
I didn't know if he knew where I lived.
I didn't know if walking to the bus stop,
if he was watching me.
I didn't know if he was going to show up
at my school one day
or a friend's house one day
or bang on my window in the middle of the night.
(tense music continues)
After he had sent out those pictures,
it wasn't too long after where the FBI
was able to trace him to his home in Jacksonville, Florida.
And that is where they ultimately caught him.
Finally, the weight, everything was off my shoulders
and I felt so relieved.
I got a subpoena to fly out
to Jacksonville, Florida to testify.
That's when I was able to meet other victims
for the first time.
He was actually doing this to over 350 other girls,
the youngest one being eight years old.
You have someone who thought they were
in an actual relationship with him.
You have another girl who had him saying
that he was going to come to her house and find her.
And you have another girl who's looking around places
in a room trying to figure out where to hang a noose
because she couldn't endure the pain anymore.
During the trial when he walked in,
he was wearing the orange jumpsuit,
shackles on his hands and feet,
just looking down, long, greasy hair.
And one of the victims next to me,
we just grabbed hands
and we just started crying our eyes out.
And finally after we gave our victim speech,
that was when the judge sentenced him.
- [Reporter] Lucas Chancellor is serving a 105-year sentence
after he blackmailed young girls
in an effort to get sexual videos and pictures of them.
It's been challenging to identify earlier victims
because Chancellor didn't save as much information on them.
- There's 200 plus girls out there
that have no idea that he's been caught.
I'm just hoping that by sharing my story,
somehow it sounds familiar and it resonates with someone
and that maybe they can look into this case
to determine if maybe that was the person
that was doing this to them.
People think that, you know, this can't happen to me.
I thought this couldn't happen to me.
I was literally your basic, normal, average girl,
living a normal life.
You're not safe unless you're actually taking
the necessary precautions to ensure you're safe.
I spent so much time being afraid, feeling alone.
If I could go back in time,
I would've told myself to speak up, tell someone.
I have so many people that have reached out to me
since I've started sharing my story.
The support that I get is so amazing.
Ultimately, that is what saved me from everything.
- [Ana] According to the FBI,
the key to keeping your private information safe is
to be careful about what you share online.
It's also advised to ignore messages from strangers
and to seek help immediately
if you believe you are being victimized.
There is no greater nightmare than a young child
who is abducted, abused, and imprisoned.
If the child is fortunate enough to be rescued,
the real work of processing the trauma only just begins.
Many women have chosen to channel
that trauma in into helping others.
Two of those women are Lori Poland,
who, at four years old,
was abducted, abused, and left for dead
in an outhouse toilet.
And Katie Beers who, at 10,
was abducted, abused and kept in an underground dungeon
by a family friend for 17 days.
(tense music continues)
- On August 22nd, 1983,
a man just drove up to me in the middle of day and said,
"Hey, do you like candy?"
And he asked me to get in the car with him.
I was then taken by my abductor
to the mountains here in Colorado.
And he found an old abandoned outhouse
and proceeded to severely abuse me.
And after abusing me,
he placed me in the pit of an outhouse toilet
and left me 15 feet below ground for dead.
And I was there for 3 1/2 days.
When bird watchers happened to be driving by,
they heard this faint cry.
They started looking around
and eventually they looked down.
And they asked what I was doing there
and I told him that I lived there.
I was reunited with my family
later that day at the hospital.
My abductor was identified.
His name was Robert Paul Thiret.
He was charged with abduction, rape,
attempted murder, and kidnapping,
and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
My story is similar to millions of people
who've been impacted by child abuse.
There's just not enough survivors
that are able to come forward
because so many people feel shame and fear
and all of these horrific things.
- My name is Katie Beers and in December of 1992,
I was abducted and held captive for 17 days.
I was 10 years old.
I grew up on Long Island, New York.
I was jostled between my godmother, Linda,
and my biological mother and my grandmother.
John Esposito is a man that was in my life
from as early as I can remember.
I loved him like an older brother or as a father figure.
He was just somebody that was always there for me.
John's house was the place to be.
He had soda and candy and treats.
He had every single game imaginable.
All of the games, he had in his bedroom.
December 28th, 1992,
I'm sitting on his unmade bed playing this game.
I'm there by myself and he sits down behind me.
He pulls me up onto his lap, puts his hand over my mouth,
and he proceeds to whisper in my ear,
"I'm not going to hurt you."
He briefly sexually assaulted me,
and then he carried me down the stairs into his office.
The next thing I know,
John picks me up and he literally
just drops me down this hole.
The dungeon is what I called it.
Within this dungeon,
he then took me and put me
in this little coffin-sized box.
And then there was silence.
While nine-year-old
Katie Beers sat trapped
in the underground bunker
of a family friend,
one precious connection
to the outside world helped her keep hope alive.
- [Katie] In my coffin-sized box, I had a television.
- [Reporter] Hoping that Katie will come home soon.
- Every day, my case was on the news.
And I think that that is a lot of the reason
why I hadn't given up hope,
because I knew that there were people
on the outside looking for me.
- We're still optimistic
that we are going to learn exactly
what occurred that night.
- January 13th, 1993,
I heard the main door to let John Esposito into the dungeon
and somebody else opens up the door.
They had said to me, "You are safe.
You can come out now."
The next thing I know is John Esposito,
the man who just held me
in an underground dungeon for 17 days,
the man that had sexually assaulted and raped me,
was sitting on the couch catty corner to me.
And he's talking to the police.
Esposito was sentenced to prison for 15 years to life.
After 20 plus years,
he was found deceased in his jail cell.
(tense music continues)
- These abduction stories can happen in our own backyards,
but it is possible for people to go through horrific things,
but even better that they can get through horrific things.
- With the proper support,
you can come out on the other side.
You don't snap your fingers and it happens.
It takes a lot of love, support, and encouragement
from the people around you,
but you can work through it.
- Transcending is when you can take your trauma
and your horrific experience
and turn that into the greater good for others.
- I decided that I wanted to write a book
about what I had been through.
It was right after the book came out
that I listened to Elizabeth Smart speak.
She got up in front
of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
and she just started talking.
She just started sharing her story.
And then after that I had decided
that that's how I was gonna do my speeches
from that point on.
I just threw caution to the wind.
I got up in front of everybody and I just shared my story.
I 100% spoke from the heart.
Everything that happened to me in my childhood,
those are all of the things that shaped me
into the woman that I am today.
- I feel like I was gifted with that experience
because I've taken something horrific
and I found a way
to help thousands and thousands of people
by letting them know it's okay to talk about this stuff.
Even if it's one person who says,
"Wow, she can go through that and get better?"
That's worth it to me.
- In 2017, Lori Poland, established EndCAN
or the National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect.
The aim of this organization is to treat child abuse
as a mental health and public health problem,
similar to suicide, diabetes, heart disease,
and breast cancer.
In all these stories,
there's a common thread of perseverance to go on with life,
even as the attention
and the support of the public spotlight fades.
- As I've talked to women's groups to say,
no matter what has happened,
no matter what anybody has done to you,
there is healing.
There is love.
- Every time someone hears my story,
the support that I get is so amazing.
I'm hoping that's helpful
for anyone who's going through this
to know that there's gonna be so many more people
who support you rather than drag you down.
- It's important for people to know that the bad things
that happen to you in life don't have to define you.
They can be a part of your story.
They can help you grow and become a better person,
but they don't have to be your defining moment.
(uplifting music)