Poorly written, but fascinating story (Perfect Victim - Christine McGuire, Carla Norton)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Perfect Victim - Christine McGuire, Carla Norton
Date:	07/07/09 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fascinating

Disadvantages: The writer makes the reader lose sympathy, which should be strong all the way through

The Perfect Victim is a true story about Colleen Stan, who at 20 years old was kidnapped whilst hitchhiking from her home on Oregon to her friend's house in North Carolina. Nothing was heard from Colleen for many years, until one day she turned up at her parents' home with a man in tow, who she said was her boyfriend. Then she disappeared of the radar for a while again, until she returned finally at told the story of her kidnapping.

During the seven years she was away she lived an horrendous life with her kidnappers, Cameron and Janice Hooker. They made her their slave, and forced her to live in a coffin shaped box which they had built under their bed. She was given a 'Slave Contract' to sign, which as far as she was concerned meant that she belonged to the Hookers and had clauses such as "She shall preserve her female body parts for the exclusive use of Him (Cameron) and Her (Janice) assigns, and Slave does hereby irrevocably declare and acknowledge her everlasting unconditional dedication to serving master to is full satisfaction". She was forced to wear a dog collar as evidence of the Hooker's ownership of her. She was humiliated by being forced to work naked, and in the later years she was subject to more and more sexual humiliation from Cameron. She was also renamed K as her slave name.

During her time she endured horrendous physical and psychological torture. Not only did she spend most of her time with in the coffin or being hung by her arms, she was whipped, her breasts burned with matches or through electric shocks, and was constantly told tales of slaves who's tried to escape and had been hunted down, tortured and killed. She was also told that if she tried to escape, 'The Company' who drew up her contract would murder her family.

This covers the first part of the book, the second part also includes the trial of Hooker and the barriers Christine McGuire had to cross in order to get a successful prosecution.

My Thoughts

Now I know there are some people who automatically believe everything they are told and everything they read, especially if someone says they are abused. I am not one of those people, and prefer to weigh up the evidence.

I have absolutely no doubt Colleen was kidnapped and that much of what she said was true. There are some parts of the story I find unbelievable. I understand the workings of Stockholm Syndrome, even if I do wonder what would possibly cause a person to identify with their abusers, and I do believe that's what she was suffering here, and is the reason she was able to go out to work, visit her family and chat to neighbours without telling them what was occurring.

It's actually the early days of the 7 year imprisonment and the slave contract that makes me wonder. She was not a child, she was a 20 year old woman, and by all accounts a reasonably well educated one. So I find it hard to believe she truly thought the slave contract was legally valid, I tend to believe she went along with more because of the threats to her family than anything else.

There was obviously a lot of doubt over her story at the time, which is why McGuire had such a hard time prosecuting. Stockholm Syndrome wasn't well known at the time as it is now, and McGuire first had to sell it as an illness, and then had to convince people that Colleen was suffering from it. The book doesn't really do a good job of explaining it, luckily I have come across it during my psychology studies, because if I'd never heard of it and been on the jury, then heard the evidence as presented in this book, I would have been loathed to believe it. I can only presume that the book has missed out big chunks of the necessary information because they didn't want it to be bogged down in technicalities.

The way the book is written is all wrong in my opinion, at the beginning I was horrified by the things that happened, and deeply upset that anyone should go though even a small part of what happened. But the writing and the language used later in the book meant I turned away from Colleen slightly and didn't feel quite so sorry for her. And this is where they should have explained Stockholm Syndrome more, and related it to her experiences. Instead they've left it to people to assume they know why Colleen is acting as she did.

It's a true story so there's no ending to give away, but anyone who doesn't want to know what happened to Cameron and Janice should skip the net section.




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I often hear people talk about how poor the sentences are in the UK, and how the US crack down with long sentences. But here we have Cameron sentenced to 104 years, yet despite that seemingly life long sentence, he will eligible for parole in 2022, not exactly a life sentence then!

I also find it amazing that Janice was allowed to keep custody of her children. McGuire stated she was a good mother, despite the fact she gave birth on a waterbed that had a woman imprisoned in a box underneath ! It seems a bit bizarre.
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It was a reasonable book, but could have been written better, I would recommend it as a library selection, but not a book worth paying for.

Summary: Dont buy it, borrow it