In May 1977, a young woman called Colleen Stan was hitchhiking through Red Bluff, a small town in northern California. An experienced hitchhiker and safety-conscious, she’d already turned down two lifts, but she was about to accept a ride that would change her life for ever.
Colleen was abducted and held captive for seven years, during which she suffered an unimaginable fate. Forced to live in a coffin-like box under his bed for up to 22 hours a day and repeatedly tortured, Colleen became a slave. Her captor’s terrible psychological hold was so strong that she went out to work and even visited her family during this time, before she was eventually able to break free.
Now in an exclusive interview, for the first time Colleen tells her incredible story, alongside members of her family, the police, prosecutors and the jury who heard a case case which shocked America, exploring in the most dramatic way the real meaning of consent, coercion and control.
Colleen had been picked up by Cameron Hooker - an unassuming 23-year-old lumberjack - his wife Janice and their eight-month old baby. With no police record and no history of family deviance, Hooker was, to the outside world, a normal man. But he had become obsessed with bondage and extreme sexual practices. Now, he was going to take things further.
Down in the basement, his plan was to break Colleen. For days he suspended her from hooks, whipped her and placed her on a home-made torture rack. Then he placed her in a coffin-sized box, blindfolded and with chains wrapped around her, for nearly four months.
Then, one night, he presented her with a contract. He told her that he was part of “the Company”, a powerful organization which kept young women as slaves, and that if she made any attempt at escape “the Company” would violently hunt both her and her family down. Colleen signed the contract and became known by her slave name - ‘K’.
As time wore on, Colleen’s plight became more and more bizarre. In between torture and captivity in the box, she was made to do domestic chores. Janice had a second child and Colleen assumed the role of family nanny. She was allowed to go jogging and forced to work in a local motel to help with the family’s finances.
Hooker allowed her to phone home, and then, incredibly, to visit her family. Despite their suspicions, none of her family wanted to confront Colleen, afraid she might be in a cult. Convinced she was being watched all the time by “the Company”, and too frightened to tell the truth, Colleen had to pretend she was Hooker’s fiancée. She got back in his car and went back to an even worse life: for the next three years, Hooker forced her to live in a box he’d built underneath his bed.
All this time, Janice knew that Colleen was being kept as a slave in her house. She too had been a victim of his sadism and had done a deal with him: he could keep a slave and in return Janice would no longer be subjected to sado-masochistic sex. But, eventually, when Hooker began talking about getting more slaves, and worried about what he might do to their daughters, Janice finally told Colleen that no such thing as “the Company”. Realigns the one thing that held Colleen as a slave was a lie, she ran away and for the first time in seven years, was in control of her life.
Hooker was arrested and charged. But Colleen faced one more nightmare: at the trial, his lawyer argued that she had stayed with him freely and produced astonishing letters in which she declared her undying love for Hooker. Now, the jury had to make up their own minds.
Wednesday, 14th May on Five at 10pm
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