Undue Influence: Definitions and Applications - California Courts ...

vulnerability of youths and whether there was legal justification for parents’ kidnappings and
deprogramming of their children (Donohue, 1985). The ACLU concluded that for those who had
reached the age of majority, there was no justification for mental incompetence proceedings,
conservatorships, or temporary guardianships unless physical coercion or its threat had been
used. In the absence of these factors, the ACLU concluded, adult inductees had the right to
exercise their prerogative, and it was essentially criminal for “deprogammers” to kidnap cult
members and “unbrainwash” them.
Stockholm Syndrome or Traumatic Bonding
The term Stockholm syndrome was coined by criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot,
who assisted police during a 1973 robbery of a bank, the Kreditbanken, in Stockholm, Sweden
(Bejerot, 1974). During the event, the robbers took four bank employees hostage and held them
for six days. After their release, the hostages refused to cooperate with law enforcement or to
testify against their captors. They saw law enforcement as the villains, and one hostage later
married one of the captors.
Although there is little published academic research on the Stockholm syndrome and the
diagnosis is not described in any international classification systems (Namnyak et al., 2007), the
syndrome is acknowledged by prominent law enforcement organizations, including the FBI,
which defines it as a psychological response in which positive bonds develop between hostages
and captors. According to the FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System, which contains data on
over 4,700 reported federal, state, and local hostage/barricade incidents, 27% of captives show
some evidence of Stockholm syndrome (deFabrique, N.; Romano, S.J.; Vecchi, G.M.; & Van
Hasselt, V.B., 1999).
An FBI directive states that the following conditions are generally believed to be
necessary for the syndrome to occur (deFabrique et al, 1999):
• A person held in captivity cannot escape and depends on the hostage taker for life.
• Captors control their captives’ basic needs and their lives.
• The hostages are isolated from others and have only their captors’ perspectives available. The
captors keep information about the outside world’s response to their actions from captives.
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