A lot of people who are now speculating about the reason Shawn Hornbeck failed to flee are implying that he could have escaped countless times. They do not understand that his captivity did not involve being physically shackled and chained, but instead he was mentally imprisoned by fear of the exposure of his shame. He would have seen himself not as an innocent victim of sexual molestation, but as his molester’s partner in it.
That feeling of partnership grows out of the victim’s belief that even if they consider that the first sexual act was the abuser’s fault, they share the blame for all the subsequent acts.
And if there were photographs, as there were in my case, the threat of his parents ever seeing them and believing their son was the real guilty party is terrifying.
From my own experience, I know that it’s easier to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger than it is to tell your mother or your father what some man has done to you.
My advice to all the amateur psychologists telling us what happened to Shawn is to just plain shut up. If you haven’t been there, yourself, you don’t know what you are talking about. Leave the kid alone, he’s been through enough grief.