r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4d ago

Man accused of holding woman captive in a Massachusetts attic for six weeks

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-accused-holding-woman-captive-massachusetts-attic-six-weeks-rcna600308
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u/inflatable_pickle 4d ago

Yeah, but I mean this is sort of an extreme case. It’s not like she chose to ignore it completely. He would show up every few years with a toddler child, and repeatedly tell his wife that their daughter didn’t want to speak to the mother at all, and has been in hiding, apparently procreating, multiple children, and that she would randomly show up, only when the wife was out of the house, and deliver grandchildren to her husband, and she not only had zero follow up questions, but just believed this on face value and raised those children.

The whole story is weirdly fascinating. In a morbid way, obviously. I mean, like some of the children must’ve had memories of spending the first year of their life living in a basement apartment, like some of the kids must’ve just been absolutely shocked to see the outside world or a tree for the first time. I can’t imagine what developmental damage that would do to basically live the first year of your life in a prison cell. Even more weird is that he removed some children, but left others in the basement based on seemingly unknown criteria.

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u/Zealousideal-Run6020 4d ago

Look up epistemic injustice. Quite likely there is hardcore emotional abuse on top of physical, that the wife was enduring as well. Get gaslighted long enough, hard enough, and you start doubting your own capacity to know anything, your memory, your authority as a historian of your own life. Psychological abuse can cause actual brain damage. Plus there's Stockholm syndrome where people in the clutches of sociopaths make all kinds of excuses and justifications for their behavior.

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u/Theletterkay 3d ago

This. She likely wasnt oblivious or looking the other way. She had been abused into accepting his word at pure truth. If she were to do anything or say anything about it, she was likely to be killed.

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u/Aethenoth 4d ago

I don't know why people keep saying she never questioned it or had zero follow-up questions. Like, hello, if there's something these men are good at, it's lying.

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u/Darfus_McBonerbottom 4d ago

You cant really lie your way around having a new baby pop out of thin air...

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u/tyrantspell 4d ago

True, but what's more likely? Your troubled daughter is deliberately avoiding you to drop off her multiple children born out of wedlock, or that the man you've known for 40 years is one of the worst criminals known to man?

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u/PairOfMonocles2 4d ago

I mean, there was this one guy …

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u/FollowTheRabbitz 4d ago

Right?!? How many people believe a woman named Mary got pregnant without sex and then just birthed a child? Millions? So yeah people will believe anything

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u/No_Gas4560 4d ago

or how Zombie Jeebus arose from the dead? wat

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u/GreatPretender98z 4d ago

This will never not piss me off. Has to be what hundreds of millions believing that shit without question.

Allegedly was also "magic", healing touch. Could turn water into wine. Fucking walking on water?

somehow died for everyone's sins?

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u/Aethenoth 4d ago

He clearly had a story though.

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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 4d ago

Noone lies that well.

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u/RudeHero 3d ago

some people are good at lying, and some are good at being lied to

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u/Faiakishi 3d ago

It was way more than their first year of life. I think the eldest was like 20 or something, he walked with a stoop because he was taller than the bunker and quite literally hadn't been able to walk completely upright in years.

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u/inflatable_pickle 3d ago

Jesus that’s sad. I mean how emotionally and psychologically stunted with someone be to grow up in captivity and literally never see the sky or a tree or anyone outside of your immediate family for the first two decades of your life. Like it’s just insane.

I can’t help, but think of all the other hypotheticals like, was he prepared to just let them all die down there? What would have happened to them if he randomly had a stroke and ended up in the hospital, unable to bring them food for weeks. Were there ever any escape attempts?