You’ve probably seen those shows like Beyond Scared Straight where a kid is so unruly that parents go to the cops for help to straighten them out. Well, a family in Missouri put their own spin on that idea and decided to scare a friendly 6-year-old boy into being more cautious around strangers – by staging his kidnapping.
This 6-year-old kid got off of the school bus last Monday and was picked up by a man who, unbeknownst to him, was his aunt’s friend. The man told the boy he would “never see his mommy again,” and that he would be “nailed to the wall of a shed.” The kid started crying, so the man showed him a gun, bound his hands and feet with plastic bags, and then blindfolded the child, according to the New York Post.
The man drove around with the child for a while, then took him to his house where he sat in the basement, still blindfolded. In the basement, his aunt pulled down his pants and told him he’d be traded to the sex industry. The worst part: he thought the situation was real.
Talk about terrifying.
Eventually, the boy was unbound and sent upstairs where his mom, aunt and grandmother lectured him about stranger danger. Later, the child told school officials what his family had done to him. The school reported it to family services, which removed the child from the home.
The boy’s mom, grandma, aunt and aunt’s friend are facing charges for the incident and are currently in jail on $250,000 bond, USA Today reports.
The family maintains that they did nothing wrong, but moms and dads around the world don’t see their actions as just a simple lesson.
“Children do ‘stupid’ things, they act without understanding the consequences because they are children,” Babble.com reader Julie Coleman writes. “Punishment through humiliation, whippings and … omg kidnapping and terrorizing … only makes a miserable, devastated child, and a psychopathic adult.”
The lady has a point. Abduction could cause problems that last well into adulthood. In fact, The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that victims of abduction might experience flashbacks, anxiety, anger and withdrawal from society – among other things. Since the kid thought it was real, who’s to say he won’t have the same issues?
The family, however, maintains that they did nothing wrong.
What do you think of their lesson?
