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Rudy Farias, the Houston man reported missing eight years ago, claimed his mother brainwashed him into staying at home and described his plight as a case of “Stockholm syndrome” – but denied she sexually abused him.
Farias broke his silence about the shocking “missing” case in a lengthy interview on Fox 26 Houston, where he tearfully said he was “just stuck at home” all these years “as if I lived in a prison.”
“She never locked me in or handcuffed me or anything like that,” Farias told the interviewers about his mom, Janie Santana. “I had free will to leave, it just felt like brainwashing, honestly.”
He said the nightmare began around the time he received a speeding ticket when he was a teen.
“‘Oh, you’re gonna get arrested because you have a speeding ticket,’ or something like that … It just escalated from there from, you know,” Farias said, describing what she allegedly told him.
When asked how his mom was able to manipulate him as an adult, he said it “felt like Stockholm syndrome, honestly,” referring to the psychological phenomenon of a victim identifying with the captor.
“It’s just, you know, you just fall in love with your, your (captor) and just want to take care of them, do this and that,” Farias said, adding that he wanted to take care of his mom “because I cared about her. She’s the only person I had.”
His big brother, Charles, died in a motorcycle accident on Feb. 13, 2011, at the age of 21.
But Santana “just held me against my will mentally, not physically,” Farias said, adding that his mom kept “bombarding me with negative thoughts” during the interminable ordeal.
“It’s like, I’m trying to get away from my mom and I’ll hear random noises and they’ll be like the little reminder in my head, like ‘don’t do that. Don’t say an answer,’” he said.
“You know, just little things. Like she’s putting ideas or thoughts into my head whenever I’m just trying to, you know, just understand the world,” Farias added.
“It’s like, I’m trying to get away from my mom and I’ll hear random noises and they’ll be like the little reminder in my head, like ‘don’t do that. Don’t say an answer,’” he said.
When family or friends would come over, Farias said, he was forced to hide in his bedroom.
“Somebody would come up, my mom would just tell me to stay in the room, keep the door locked, don’t let them in [and] don’t make any sounds,” he said.
“I would just have to listen to my family, be happy and cheerful on the other side of the f—- door,” Farias said. “I wanted to scream for them, but at the same time I couldn’t. The only person I could trust was my mom.”
Farias also said his mother forced him to sleep in her bed.
“It wouldn’t be anything sexual or anything like that. I wouldn’t lie about that because there’s plenty of people that need honest truths when it comes to those things that just muddies the water to lie about those types of things,” he said.
Farias added that the “media like to twist my words and confuse things, I never said anything bad about her in that regard.”
When asked if he had ever asked his mom why they were pretending that he was missing, Farias said he didn’t remember.