Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Seares: Ces and Stockholm syndrome By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
IDLE talk about ABS-CBN broadcaster Ces Drilon’s kidnapping by Abu Sayyafs in Jolo ranges from paying ransom to how she is being treated by her captors and, inevitably, whether the Stockholm syndrome is working on her and her companions.
In 1973 in Stockholm, Sweden, four bank employees were held hostage by a gunman, Jan-Erik Olsson, 32, burglar and jail escapee, and his former cellmate who later joined him and the captives in the bank vault.
The two convicts detained their hostages inside the vault for 131 hours, a published account says.
When released, the captives feared the police more than their captors, and even thanked them “for giving them back their lives.” They visited the perpetrators in prison and one female victim married one of them.
Defense mechanism
The sympathy to hostage takers, experts explain, is an “automatic defense mechanism” which results from “their total dependence on their captors and from extreme fear.” Another outcome is when hostage takers become emotionally attached to their prisoners.
Whatever psychological mumbo-jumbo, what strikes those who worry about the safety of Drilon and her companions is that the risk from kidnapping is not just physical injury or death but emotional scarring as well.
It isn’t just the millions of pesos that will be paid to the kidnappers despite an avowed no-ransom policy. It’s also the loss of face by a government that can’t protect its citizens and punish law violators.
To a victim, the humiliation of caring for or even loving the very person who broke the hostage’s spirit worsens the assault, compounds the crime.
