Find Her - Facts

This is a book about victims, and one of the characters is a victim advocate, who help victims and their families. Victim advocates are trained to support victims of crime. They offer emotional support, victims’ rights information, help in finding needed resources and assistance in filling out crime victim related forms. 

Flora experiences the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a proposed condition or theory that tries to explain why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors.It is supposed to result from a rather specific set of circumstances, namely the power imbalances contained in hostage-taking, kidnapping, and abusive relationships. 

What Flora experiences is also called trauma bonding. Trauma bonds  are emotional bonds that arise from a cyclical pattern of abuse. A trauma bond occurs in an abusive relationship wherein the victim forms an emotional bond with the perpetrator.

An real example given in the book of Stockholm syndrome is Patty Hearst. Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. 

The body the police find is located in Mattapan. Mattapan  is a neighbourhood in Boston. Mattapan has a large portion of green space within the neighborhood. The Harambee Park, the Boston Nature Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, Clark-Cooper Community Gardens, and historic Forest Hill Cemetery can all be considered by some green space within the neighborhood of Mattapan. 

In the book some examples of women who were kidnapped and survived are given.

One is Elizabeth Smart. Elizabeth Ann Smart (born November 3, 1987) is an American child safety activist. She gained national attention at age 14 when she was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City by Brian David Mitchell. Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Smart captive for nine months until she was rescued by police officers on a street in Sandy, Utah.

Another was Jaycee Dugard. On June 10, 1991, Jaycee Lee Dugard, an eleven-year-old girl, was abducted from a street while walking to a school bus stop in Meyers, California. Dugard remained missing for over 18 years until 2009, when a convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido, visited the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, accompanied by two adolescent girls, who were discovered to be the biological daughters of Garrido and Dugard, on August 24 and 25 of that year. The unusual behaviour of the trio sparked an investigation that led Garrido's parole officer, Edward Santos Jr. to order Garrido to take the two girls to a parole office in Concord, California, on August 26. Garrido was accompanied by a woman who was eventually identified as Dugard.