How to Piss elle Off When She's Already Sleepy and Cold

...fuck with the kids. Seriously, I checked my e-mail today and one AOL headline was "Why Didn't Boy Try to Escape?" a reference to Shawn Hornbeck.

I get a particularly nasty attitude when people ask this of battered women (because just leaving, you know, is so easy to do). But when assholes start asking it of kids?

I get sick to my stomach.

He is a child who had to depend on this man for everything. Everything. And who knows what the bastard may have been telling him? Who knows how terrified he was at what might happen to him, to people he loved, if he tried to escape? So what if he had internet access and a phone? If you've been in a violent or abusive situation, you know escaping is more about what is in your mind than all the routes available to you.

I hate this question, because it has the suspicious smell of victim blaming. There is an implication that "It must not have been too bad," or "He must have liked something," or somehow, an 11-year-old child was in collusion with his abductor.

I hope they focus this much on the damned kidnapper's motives.