The stunning discovery this week of three women who vanished a decade ago has led to the arrest of three brothers in Cleveland, Ohio.
It’s still not clear how the women were held prisoner for so long and how one was finally able to escape and call for help. But a number of other cases through the years have shown that abductors often subject their captors to mental abuse to hold children for years and convince them not to attempt a getaway.
In Canada, there have been few cases of strangers abducting children and keeping them hostage for years, although there have been some cases of horrific abuse, including the case of two boys in Blackstock, Ont., who were beaten and kept in cages by their caregivers for years.
Here are five recent high-profile cases from around the world of children being kidnapped and held as long as 24 years without detection.
Elizabeth Smart was 14 when she was abducted in the middle of the night at knifepoint from her parents' Utah home. She was held captive by a street preacher named Brian David Mitchell who dressed her in white, religious robes and forced her into a polygamous marriage with his wife Wanda Barzee. For nine months, she was forced to consume drugs and alcohol and raped nearly daily. She was finally discovered in March 2003 when an alert passerby saw her walking down the street with Mitchell and Barzee. The passerby recognized Mitchell from an episode of “America’s Most Wanted” that had aired the night before. Mitchell was eventually handed two life sentences without parole. Barzee was sentenced to 15 years.
Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped at age 10 in March 1998 on her way to school in Vienna. She was held for more than eight years in a secret cellar in the small town of Strasshof and was repeatedly beaten, starved and forced to do housework half-naked. In a book she wrote later, Natascha said her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, was paranoid, unpredictable and cleanliness-obsessed. He also admired Hitler and considered himself an Egyptian god. Natascha finally escaped in August, 2006, when she was outside vacuuming Priklopil’s vehicle. When police arrived hours later to arrest Priklopil, he committed suicide by stepping in front of a train.
Elisabeth Fritzl was discovered in the spring of 2008 after having been imprisoned for 24 years in a dungeon in her parents’ Austrian home. During her captivity, she was repeatedly raped by her father Josef and gave birth to seven children. One of the children died shortly after birth and Josef burned the body. Three of the middle children lived relatively normal lives upstairs in the home, looked after by Fritzl's wife, Rosemarie. She had been tricked into thinking that Elisabeth had run away and returned periodically to dump her newborn children on their doorstep. The other three children were kept in the cellar and never allowed to leave.
The family was eventually found when Josef allowed Elisabeth to take her oldest daughter to hospital after she became seriously ill with an infection and malnutrition. Fritzl was soon arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for both the confinement and the death of the baby boy. His wife was never charged.
Jaycee Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped in 1991 on her way to school. She was then held prisoner by Phillip and Nancy Garrido in their backyard in Antioch, Calif. for 18 years and repeatedly raped. During her captivity, Jaycee gave birth to two daughters. She was eventually found when Garrido went at the University of California, Berkeley with Jaycee’s two children, and aroused suspicion of campus police by acting bizarrely. When he requested a permit for a religious demonstration, a background check revealed he was on parole and investigators were called to his home where they discovered the backyard cell.
Shawn Hornbeck was abducted at age 11 while riding his bicycle near his Richwoods, Missouri, home in October 2002. Pizza store worker Michael J. Devlin held the boy in his home for more than four years, repeatedly raping him and threatening to kill him if he ever tried to escape. When Devlin kidnapped another boy, 13-year-old Ben Ownby, eyewitness tips led police to Devlin's apartment, where they discovered both Ben and 15-year-old Shawn. Devlin is currently serving 74 life sentences for sexual assault, kidnapping and attempted murder.
