aycee Dugard, kidnapped when she was just eleven, was recently found 18 years later.  This article discusses why kidnapped children such as Jaycee don’t rebel or run away from their captors.  Interestingly, there are many parallels between how kidnappers control and condition their prisoners and how religious cults do it.

(from the article):

“I’m so proud of my girls. They don’t know any curse words,” Garrido [the kidnapper] told the Berkeley police officer whose suspicions about the children cracked the case. That methods of raising children are deeply alike even as ideologies vary is, of course, the reason people don’t agree where to draw the line between a religious household and a crazy-cult one.

...Neighbors’ stories suggest that Garrido taught the girls to avoid talking to outsiders, and to say they were “home-schooled.” That must sound familiar to anyone who has escaped an insular religious upbringing. In fact, Garrido’s determination to isolate the children from the wider world doesn’t look very different from the actions of religious parents of all denominations. One former Jehovah’s Witness remembers explaining to another child “that I was not allowed to be friends with her. I also explained that sometimes I forget and asked her to remind me not to talk to her in the future. We were only SIX!”

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