THE MORNING I WAS ABDUCTED at 16, I woke up to strangers' boots pounding outside my lilac bedroom. My mother kept everything pristine in our Northern California home-no one wore shoes inside. So I knew something was off.
My door burst open. A man and woman appeared-their figures so tall and wide they filled my door frame.
"Come with us," they demanded. "No," I spoke, then froze. The man inched toward me.
"I wasn't asking." He seized my arm. Immediately, his grip started tightening like a blood pressure machine, but he wasn't measuring my lifehe was taking it.
"Help," I wailed.
They tackled me. I tried to break free. They won. Two months into eleventh grade, I was barely a quarter of their size.
Face-down against my floral carpet, they handcuffed me. They carried me downstairs where my mom stood by the front door.
"Only your parents can stop this," the woman revealed.
"Sorry," my mother mouthed, but it carried no sound. My mom stood still.
My captors didn't stop moving. They shoved me into the back of a cold, black car and drove away from my Silicon Valley neighborhood and my childhood. It was November 23, 2014. I've been tormented by nightmares ever since. All I knew then was what my captors told me: my parents hired my kidnappers.
I struggled with depression in high school and my family trusted my principal for a recommendation for a wilderness therapy program.
Denne historien er fra November 15, 2024-utgaven av Newsweek US.
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Denne historien er fra November 15, 2024-utgaven av Newsweek US.
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Can Alternative Therapies Treat Cancer?
Doctor and breast cancer survivor Liz O'Riordan addresses misinformation around managing the disease
Falling for Romance
A new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, celebrates the writer/director best known for her iconic rom-coms and strong female characters
Cracking the Norse Code
Walrus DNA has shown that Vikings were likely the first to have encountered Indigenous North Americans
Monumental Shift
The discovery of 165-million-year-old crystals Easter Island has upended the longheld notion of how the Earth's \"conveyor belt\" moves
'OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC REFORMS ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN'
It is a well-known fact across the globe that the North Korean regime is irrational and unpredictable, but we have been consistent in strengthening our defense posture against the threat from North Korea since the Korean War, and I believe that their conventional capability is much inferior to that of the Korean military.
'They Read My Eulogy As I Lay in an Open Grave'
Like Paris Hilton, Natasia Pelowski claims she was subjected to abuse at a teenage therapy program
Russian Economy Faces 'Burnout
Vladimir Putin admits difficulties” as the country’s key interest rate reaches a historic high
China's 'Silent Chemical War'
The U.S. must investigate Beijing's role in the manufacturing of fentanyl that is killing Americans, says one mom whose daughter died after accidentally taking the illicit substance
HARSH HEADWINDS
President Yoon Suk Yeol's BATTLE to reform a South Korea beset with structural problems under the specter of an increasingly aggressive neighbor to THE NORTH
Bridget Everett
BRIDGET EVERETT NEVER THOUGHT SHE'D BE THE LEAD OF A TV SHOW. \"I come from the downtown world in New York, a cabaret singer, and these things just don't happen, you don't find yourself with three seasons of HBO.
