If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.
—Harriet Tubman
August 23, 1973, began like any other day for Kristin Enmark, a petite twenty-three-year-old woman with sassy short brown hair from Stockholm, Sweden.1 She had already plunged into her work as a bank stenographer, a job she generally liked, when she heard a commotion out in the lobby area. She looked up to see a man with an afro wig and sunglasses pull out a machine gun, which he fired in the air. She and the forty other terrified bank employees and customers ducked for cover or ran out of the building.
“The party has only started,” the man shouted in English.2
Police were called and responded quickly. As they walked into the bank, the gunman, Jan Erik Olsson, shot and injured one of the two policemen. He ordered the other officer to sit in a chair and “sing something.” The officer managed to croak out a few bars of “Lonesome Cowboy.”3
Olsson, who had intended to rob the bank, took hostage four bank employees—three women (Kristin, Birgitta Lundblad, and Elisabeth Oldgren) and one man (Sven Safstrom). He ordered a male bookkeeper to tie their hands behind their backs. He made several demands of police, including that they bring a friend of his, Clark Olofsson, from prison where he was serving a sentence for another crime.4
Kristin would later learn that in addition to the machine gun, Olsson had brought reserve ammunition, plastic explosives (which he had expertise in using), blasting caps, a knife, and a radio. He meant business. Even though he had botched the bank robbery, he remained determined to make something out of what was left.5
Over the next days, Kristin and the other hostages would come to know Olsson and Olofsson not only as strangers who held the key to their life and death, but as the men who controlled everything about their lives, including where and what they ate, where and how much they slept, where and when they went to the bathroom, and how safe they felt.
Curiously, in short order this also gave the gunmen control over their hostages’ emotions. In a matter of hours, Kristin and the others had so bonded to the gunmen that they believed the two men were actually protecting them from law enforcement, which they now viewed as a threat. Further, the hostages had become protective of the gunmen, whom they viewed as saviors rather than captors. The phenomenon would become known as “Stockholm syndrome.”6
For five days, as the hostages were trapped in the bank vault with their captors, they had explosives strapped to them, witnessed the robbers shoot two more officers who were trying to rescue them by drilling a hole in the top of the bank vault, and had their lives threatened daily.7 Yet by the second day of captivity, when Olsson gave a commissioner permission to come in and check on the welfare of the hostages, the hostages showed hostility toward the commissioner. He said that none of the hostages had any requests for him and he could detect no imploring looks. There seemed to be a cordial disposition between the hostages and their captors; Olofsson even stood with his arm around Kristin and Elisabeth’s shoulders in seeming camaraderie. To Kristin, who practically curled up her lip at the commissioner, the disdain she felt toward him made perfect sense. His presence jeopardized the safety she felt with Olsson and Olofsson.
Officials had agreed to almost all of Olsson’s requests, including bulletproof jackets, food, money, two pistols, and a fast getaway car. The only nonnegotiable item was that the captors not be allowed to take the hostages with them when they left, even though all four had petitioned to leave with their captors.8
Later that day, Kristin had the opportunity to call Prime Minister Olof Palme. Although she didn’t know him personally, they spoke for forty-two minutes. She felt that if she could convince him that they were really safe here with Olsson, the officials would let them all leave together.
“I am really disappointed,” she told the prime minister. “I think you are sitting there playing checkers with our lives. I fully trust Clark [Olofsson] and the robber [Olsson]. I am not desperate. They haven’t done a thing to us. On the contrary, they have been very nice. But you know, Olof, what I’m scared of is that the police will attack and cause us to die.”9
“The police will not harm you,” the prime minister replied. “Can you believe that?”
“You must forgive me, but in this situation I don’t believe it.”
“I think that’s terribly unfair. Here are a great many policemen risking their lives, who have not moved aggressively in all this time. The purpose, of course, is to protect you.”
“Of course they can’t attack us . . . [Olsson] is sitting here and he’s protecting us from the police.”
The phone call ended with Kristin sarcastically telling Prime Minister Palme, “Thanks for the help!”10
Kristin and the other hostages were fully convinced by the second day that their safety was dependent on the robbers, not the police.
The third day, after negotiations to have the police send in food and other supplies had fallen through, Olsson wrote the following note: “The girls have begun to believe that police intend to sacrifice them and are only looking for an excuse to justify the massacre later on. The girls believe that the police will make sure it was we who started it and that the police simply defended themselves, so that they can afterward regret that everyone was killed.”11
Later, when the ordeal was over, another hostage, Birgitta Lundblad, was asked if the note was accurate. She indicated it was. “We were facing two threats, and one was all we could possibly handle. About the robber’s threat we could do nothing—he was armed and we were with him. But we weren’t with the police. We imagined we could protect ourselves against them. To imagine that, of course, meant believing in Jan [Olsson].”12
Kristin and Olofsson formed a special bond. One night she awoke from a nightmare screaming, “Don’t! Don’t!” Olofsson immediately rushed to her side, consoling her until she was herself again. She told police after the rescue that she and Olofsson held hands. “Perhaps it sounds a little like a cliché, but Clark [Olofsson] gave me tenderness. . . . It made me feel enormously secure. It was what I needed.”13
Even at the end of the ordeal, after five days in the vault, Kristin tried to defend her captors as they were to exit. Police had sprayed tear gas in the vault, causing choking and vomiting inside.
“We give up. Let us out!” Olsson hollered.14
“Hostages first,” the police replied.
Kristin refused. “No, Jan [Olsson] and Clark [Olofsson] go first. You’ll gun them down if we [leave first],” she yelled.15
As the vault door was opened, the hostages and their captors said their good-byes. The women kissed their captors, and the male hostage shook their hands. Then all six came out of the vault, perpetrators first.
The hostages were to be taken to a medical center to be evaluated. Kristin, however, was so worried about the men who had taken her hostage that she refused to lie on her stretcher. As she craned her neck to see them and spotted Olofsson being interrogated by police, she called out, “Clark, I’ll see you again!”16 And she did. Although Olofsson had to go back to prison to serve the rest of his term, which amounted to almost six years, Kristin and her family would become longtime friends with him and his family.
After their rescue, the hostages reiterated their claims that during the ordeal they were more frightened of the police than of the men who had taken them hostage. They had clearly identified with their captors and created an alternate reality for themselves.
In the days and months following the rescue, all of the hostages remained loyal to the perpetrators. One hostage even accused the psychiatrists of trying to brainwash them to turn against their captors.17 When the hostages were finally willing to testify against their captors a full six months after the holdup, Olsson was sentenced to ten years as the instigator of the ordeal.
Bonding with the Perpetrator
The Stockholm syndrome18—this identification of victims with their abusers—has been linked to many famous kidnapping and hostage cases in the United States, including Patty Hearst, Elizabeth Smart, Shawn Hornbeck, and Jaycee Dugard. After Dugard’s rescue in August 2009, kidnapping survivor Shawn Hornbeck was asked why he thought she had never escaped. “You’re brainwashed,” he said. “It’s as simple as that. I know people use that term a lot, but that’s what happens to you. It’s like you are on autopilot, only someone else is controlling all the switches. They control every little, minute detail in your life. Everything.”19 Attachment between hostage and captor is the rule rather than the exception. The goal of the perpetrator is to instill in the victim not just fear of death but gratitude for being allowed to live.
Others who may experience Stockholm syndrome include cult members, concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, abused children, incest victims, victims of battering or psychological abuse, and those in intimidating or controlling relationships. Readers who have experienced domestic violence may understand the feelings of Stockholm syndrome all too well, since power and control are the hallmarks of abusive relationships.
The human mind and heart are complex. But for the purposes of this book, this story helps us witness the phenomenon of four victims held in a bank vault by robbers whom they had never previously met. In a matter of hours, the victims felt safer and more protected with their captors than with the police. Possibly this story can also help us understand why human trafficking victims, some who have been groomed by their captors for months or years, can remain loyal to—and return to—those captors, even when that seemingly makes no sense to an outsider.
The same dynamic that made the hostages in that Stockholm bank feel more trust and loyalty toward the robbers holding them captive than they did toward the police keeps victims from escaping traffickers who have enslaved them. Stockholm syndrome may finally have been identified in 1973, but its effects are nothing new. Harriet Tubman, that courageous and saintly woman who believed that, like Moses, she had to lead her people to freedom, once said, “If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.”20
I would say the same holds true today. I know many survivors of sex trafficking who have experienced torturous abuse from their pimps, yet they remain convinced, even years after they escape the life, that their involvement in prostitution was their own idea, until they finally sort through the emotions and facts. Trauma bonds are a powerful shackle.
How does this kind of brainwashing occur? It usually starts with abuse, a common occurrence in every type of human trafficking case. Captors and/or abusers make a practice of controlling their victims through fear and intimidation, usually starting with verbal abuse. When a girl is soliciting sex buyers on the track (streets where soliciting is commonly done) and she hasn’t picked up a customer in a little while, her pimp will frequently drive up and have her get in the car. “Get out there and make me some money,” he screams at her. (That’s the censored version.) Then he may tell her that she’s worthless and call her names that would not be appropriate to print here. He may threaten her with a beating or other physical abuse.
The threats are all too real. The violence, which impacts 86 percent of US women and girls sold into prostitution, according to one survey,21 varies from slaps and punches to more overt physical force and even horrific torture. This physical abuse has a psychological component as well. It encourages victims to cooperate, since they seek to avoid being punished for infractions like bringing home less money than their quota.
It’s also not uncommon for perpetrators to punish one victim in front of another to reinforce the fear that they are capable of inflicting severe injury or even death. This extreme physical abuse usually occurs when a victim attempts to resist the captors’ control. By making an example of the rebel, even to the point of killing her, they can cement the others’ cooperation, which ultimately will enhance the traffickers’ profits despite the loss of an income-generating body.22
Beating a slave’s friend or co-slave instead of the person who supposedly committed the misdeed is another powerful tool when it comes to controlling victims. Threatening a woman’s family can be even more effective. Young girls who are sex trafficked are commonly told by their pimp that he will go get a cherished little sister, cousin, or some other young and innocent girl she knows and loves, and force her into prostitution if she doesn’t do what he wants. Threats of harm might also be made against the victims’ parents, friends, or children. The Las Vegas dancer trafficked to Japan, whose story I shared in chapter 7, was successfully kept in check for years by regular reminders from her traffickers that they knew where her daughter lived and would have people “take care of her family” if she didn’t obey them. To keep her family safe, she did what she was told to do. She knew all too well that her registration form contained all the information they would need to execute their threats.
Getting a girl hooked on drugs, a common tactic in sex trafficking, is another way that traffickers gain cooperation and loyalty from their victims. As mentioned in chapter 1, in our small town there are credible reports of young homeless girls waking up in the middle of the night with needles in their arms. A short time later they disappear from the homeless camp. Rumor has it that they are now with traffickers, who control them completely simply by giving or withholding drugs. Once victims become addicts, they will do anything to get the drugs they crave. As an added incentive, traffickers then hold out a carrot: the more money a victim brings in, the better drugs she or he will be given.
As we saw with Kristin in the Stockholm bank, eventually the lack of control over one’s own life creates a strange bonding—and even a sense of safety—with one’s captor. That explains why traffickers such as pimps can actually control their victims by threatening to leave them. In addition, captors go to great lengths to convince their victims that no one would want to help them even if they asked. Victims are told that police will not believe them, that the police are corrupt, that the trafficker has links to the police, or that the victim is at a legal disadvantage in some way and will be arrested. Eventually, victims come to fear police involvement just as Kristin did and to see their captor as the person who is protecting them from law enforcement or from others who might have been able to assist in their escape. Indeed, in an effort to survive, that’s how twisted the mind can become.
It is particularly easy for traffickers to convince people who are not US citizens that they’ll be deported if they try to escape their captivity. For many victims, deportation and the shame of returning to their homeland in this manner cause them to believe that staying under the existing slavery is a better option. Others simply fear an outside world and legal system about which they know nothing.
Captors of both foreign-born nationals and US citizens feed this fear and rehearse a script, instructing their victims what to say in case the law does catch up with them. These traffickers know the questions the police will likely ask, and victims are trained to answer in such a way that the perpetrator is not implicated. This scripting, as it’s called, is enforced by the other means of control discussed in this chapter, including threats to the victims and their loved ones.
Why Victims Don’t Run
There are a host of other reasons—most of which are also symptoms of Stockholm syndrome—that explain why human trafficking victims may not try to escape even when the door is unlocked and the coast is clear:
Shaking the Syndrome
Fortunately, some human trafficking victims do manage to shake the Stockholm syndrome and break the chains of human trafficking. Kendall Simmons was a strong student from a good home, whose parents cared about her in all the right ways.24 But that’s not always enough to immunize a young person against the persuasions of the wrong boy. So when Kendall’s boyfriend of three months, Darren “DJ” Evans, was kicked out of his mother’s home, she moved out of her parents’ home and into DJ’s car to live with him.
Within days, he entreated her to sell her body. “Baby, we need money,” he told her. “Please, baby, do it for me.”25
She believed she was in love with DJ, so she did what he asked and started walking the strip, turning up to twenty-five tricks a day. She was just sixteen.
Things soon went from bad to worse when DJ began beating her. Each day she headed off to high school wearing sunglasses to hide a black eye or trying to walk without the limp that a beating had induced. As soon as classes were out, she hit the streets to earn money that she was required to bring back to DJ.
Kendall knew that DJ was an alcoholic. She knew he was abusive and controlling. Yet she believed she was in love with him and that he would eventually change his behavior. She believed they would live happily ever after. It took a year for her to decide that she had had enough and that she was ready to go back to her loving family. “I always had a family that I could run back to,” she told a reporter. “But I’m rare. I know there’s a lot of girls out there that don’t have families like mine.”26
The day after Kendall told DJ she was leaving him for good and actually moved out, he called her at her parents’ home and begged to come see her. She agreed. She wanted to show him and herself that she was strong now. The decision nearly cost Kendall her life.
DJ strangled and kicked her, tortured and humiliated her, including requiring her to bark like a dog in order to get a glass of water. Fortunately, she was able to call 911 before he broke her cell phone in half. When the police came, the strangulation marks on her neck were all the evidence they needed to arrest DJ, who subsequently pled guilty to second-degree assault and promoting prostitution. Prostitution? At sixteen, Kendall was not a prostitute but a victim of human trafficking. DJ was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Kendall proved to be a courageous and determined survivor. With the support of her family, she graduated with her high school class and went on to community college in a nearby town. She’s majoring in criminal justice and hopes to one day join law enforcement as a detective or an investigator.27
As Kendall’s and other survivors’ families know, rescue is the beginning, not the end of the healing for the victim. There are often lasting mental and physical health issues in addition to the emotional challenges.
Because of the extent of terror and abuse trafficking victims have experienced, there is much work to be done before they can reenter normal life. This is especially true of sex-trafficking victims whose self-image has been systematically stripped away. Victims have usually been ostracized from their friends and family by their perpetrators and/or as a survival mechanism. Likewise, it is hard for victims to return to normal life because they feel everyone knows what happened to them and are embarrassed and afraid of being exposed.
In addition, victims will often take on their abuser’s perspective during captivity as part of the bonding with captors mentioned earlier in this chapter. So in addition to not wanting to leave their traffickers, after a period of time victims may come to share their captors’ belief systems. These new beliefs can differ drastically from their previous convictions and may include believing that their parents, family, and friends never really loved them like their captor/abuser does or that they cannot survive without their captor/abuser. Victims have been known to threaten their family and friends with restraining orders if they continue to “interfere” or try to help them escape their situation.
Trapped in the Life
Having been stripped of their self-image to the point of adopting an alien set of values, and fearing rejection for what they believe they have now become, some victims of sex trafficking who are rescued won’t break free from that kind of life. Since most lack education and job skills, a percentage will inevitably return to the “work” they now believe is their only option instead of remaining in safety.
Breaking free from sex trafficking can be especially difficult for juveniles, virtually all of whom are pimp controlled. Built of desperation and fear, the bonds they form with their pimps can be seemingly impossible to break. This can be particularly true for the young girl who believes she’s in love with the very man who is pimping her out. “The problem is that there is no methadone for a bad relationship,” says Rachel Lloyd, who was sexually exploited as a child and who is now the director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), a program in New York that helps girls escape and stay away from the lives they’ve led.28 That helps explain why some girls continue “working” for pimps even after the pimps are incarcerated.
Giving Help and Shelter
Despite the fact that only the most effective treatment will help the estimated 100,000 child victims of sex trafficking29 reclaim their lives, there are way too few residential treatment centers in the United States for sex-trafficked children.
Consider the horrific physical, emotional, and even spiritual damage that can occur to a child who has been subject to crimes like rapes, beatings, brainwashing, and torture for any period of time. Then one day they are rescued, maybe even against their will. They can’t be sent back to go to school with the friends they knew before they were subjected to “the life.” They need specialized, caring treatment from those who understand this trauma. The challenge is, there are not enough resources available.
While social service organizations seem to be developing a better understanding of the specific needs of teens rescued from sex trafficking, putting a victim in a traditional foster home hasn’t been the best solution. Children and teens subjected to commercial sexual exploitation have been conditioned by their pimps to escape from a foster home as soon as they get a chance. That can happen as quickly as entering the front door and walking through the kitchen and out the back door. These youngsters need special services tailored to address the specific abuses and brainwashing they have experienced while being sex trafficked.
As of the time I am writing this book, I know of multiple shelters in the works that plan to tackle these specific needs. I earnestly pray many more shelters will soon be available and that they can be generous with the services and unconditional love that will be imperative when it comes to giving these precious young beings the new start they deserve. These victims and survivors are our kids, and they deserve a helping hand so they can live their lives to the fullest.
Don’t Let Them Get Away with This
Human trafficking and slavery thrive in ignorance, silence, and secrecy. But ordinary people like you and me can protest and in a united voice say, “No more!” We owe it to the victims as well as to ourselves not to turn away but to speak out instead.
Jacobo Timmerman, who was a political prisoner during the Holocaust, says, “The Holocaust will be understood not so much for the number of victims as for the magnitude of silence. And what obsesses me the most is the repetition of silence.”30 We all have the opportunity to speak up and not let silence happen during this modern-day atrocity.
Since I became aware of the injustices, the horrors, and the atrocities human traffickers and slave masters commit every day, I’ve joined countless others who can’t keep quiet. And while I don’t spend my every waking moment talking to people about human trafficking, I regularly look for opportunities to open people’s eyes and help them to understand that these things are happening every day and everywhere—sometimes right under our own noses. I invite you to join the movement and do the same.
Speak up about modern slavery to people you know—your friends, your family members, the leaders in your communities or church, or anyone who is willing to listen.
January 11 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. A multitude of events held across the nation on or around that day are designed to raise awareness about human trafficking. Looking for an event to attend, support, or even to volunteer at could be a way for you to engage with others in the fight against human trafficking.
Additionally, once a year, faith-based organizations dedicate a Sunday and a weekend of prayer to anti–human trafficking efforts. These events communicate a message: I will not tolerate any child of God in my neighborhood, in my backyard, or in my sphere of influence to be trafficked, to be sold, or to be used. If you are part of a faith-based group, ask them to join the movement to stop slavery in our nation as part of these events and others.
Speak to your local law enforcement and social service agencies, to state and federal agencies, and to state and national leaders, including your own state and federal legislators and others who can make a big difference.
And when you see ads in publications that tolerate things that undergird human trafficking, make your voice heard and protest vigorously. At the Super Bowl, many people sent letters and emails of complaint not only to the magazine mentioned in chapter 7 that ran exploitative sex ads but also to many mainstream corporations that advertised in the magazine. Mainstream companies do not like that kind of spotlight and will usually pressure the publication in question to change its policies.
All a perpetrator asks is that we remain silent. I have vowed to raise my voice about modern slavery as long as I have breath. Take a pledge to break that silence and make as much noise about the atrocity of human trafficking as you can. Because as long as one of us is enslaved, none of us is truly free.
For Discussion