(Newswire.net — February 6, 2015) — Every parent’s nightmare is that his or her children would trust a stranger and willingly go with them. To additionaly ensure that their child won’t trust a stranger, parents often make secret passwords with kids. For example if a stranger approaches a child with a ‘convincing story’ that their mom is stuck at work and she sent her colleague to pick them up, they would have to say the families password.
Something that no responsible parent would do is to stage a kidnaping so that the child would learn what to expect.
According to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, a family from Missouri did just that.
A 6-year-old boy endured an emotional four-hour staged kidnapping because his family thought he was being too nice to the stranger, police said on Thursday. The boy’s mother, grandmother, aunt and a co-worker who played kidnapper are being charged with kidnapping and other felonies.
According to aLincoln County Police press release, “Family members told investigators their primary intent was to educate the victim and felt they did nothing wrong.”
Reportedly, after the boy got off the school bus, he was approached by an unknown man presenting himself as the family friend. The man was Nathan Wynn Firoved, one of the aunt’s co-workers who then lured the 6-year-old boy into his pickup. Then he tied up the boy, and threatened him with a gun. He left the boy in a basement where the boy’s pants were removed, and he was told that he would be sold into slavery, police said.
It is not clear whether the ‘kidnapper’ was acting according to a prearranged script, or was simply carried away. Either way, everything occurred in a brutal way. The kidnapper told the child that he would never “see his mommy again,” and he would be “nailed to the wall of a shed,” the sheriff’s statement said.
“The victim remained in the basement for some time before he was unbound and told to go upstairs, where the victim’s family lectured him about stranger-danger,” the press release said. According to the Police, the kidnapper said he was updating the family via cell phone about the boy’s condition.
The investigation started when the boy told school officials Wednesday what had happened to him, after school officials alerted the police and placed the 6-year-old into protective custody. Ironically, the boy was taken from his family again, but this time for real and for a long time.
According to a CNN report, the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Hupp, is charged with felony kidnapping and felony abuse and neglect of a child. The grandmother, Rose Brewer; the aunt, Denise Kroutil; and Firoved are also charged with felonious restraint.