I'm sure conservative talking heads are going to have a field day with this story of false abduction from Ohio.
A pregnant attorney who vanished for four days last week now says her tale of being kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to Georgia was fabricated, police said Tuesday. Her husband said she had "a meltdown."I can't help but notice the parallels and contrasts between this story and the ludicrous Jennifer Wilbanks: Runaway Bride, a few years back. In that story, a white Georgia woman disappeared days before her wedding, and called from the road with a Susan Smith-like story about being abducted by a Hispanic man and white woman. A media circus ensued, and Wilbanks' disappearance was the lead news story for days.
Karyn McConnell Hancock, a former Toledo city councilwoman, had disappeared Wednesday and was found Saturday near Atlanta. Her husband said Monday that his 35-year-old wife, six months pregnant with her second child, claimed she was kidnapped.
Cobb County police say she claimed two white men and a black woman abducted her.
Police said at a news conference that she recanted Monday after eight hours of questioning. Hancock will likely be charged with making a false police report, said Police Chief Mike Navarre. Police would not discuss a motive, but Hancock's husband, Lawrence Hancock, said his wife has been having psychological problems for several years.
Once Wilbanks was "found" in New Mexico, the house of cards unraveled, and it turned out that she was simply having a case of cold feet. Wilbanks was charged with felony indictment of giving false information to police, but the charges were eventually dropped. This being America and all, Wilbanks of course got a lucrative book and movie deal outta this whole debacle, and ended up suing her ex-fiance for half the cost of a home he bought with the proceeds in a very odd turn of events. And they say love is unconditional. P'shaw.
By contrast, I didn't hear jack squat about Hancock's disappearance until her story also unraveled. This is of course no real surprise, given the media's "who the f**k cares?" attitude toward missing black women, and heck, missing black people in general. But it is interesting that both Wilbanks and Hancock blamed their disappearances on someone of the opposite race. Anyone care to offer an opinion on this rationale? I'm fresh outta PoV's on that one. You know where to weigh in.
Hancock's family seems to indicate that she's been having some emotional problems in addition to being in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. Those are classic signs of "crying out", and I wish her the best. I just pray nobody was unnecessarily detained for her false allegations, as in the case of Smith and Wilbanks.
That said, I'm pretty sure this will be both the first and last we hear of Hancock. She will probably get a similar sentence to that of Wilbanks, but there will absolutely be no WifeTime™ Movie of the Week.
Cause Hollywood doesn't give a crap about missing black women either.
[Editor's Note: Just in case you were wondering, no new news on Stepha Henry. Pray for the family. I would imagine the holidays are going to be especially rough.]
Ohio Attorney Recants Abduction Story [AP]
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I remember hearing the story on radio on the all-news station here in DC on Saturday. The first thing I said to myself was that this was bogus. I didn't know her race or anything. It was the first I had heard of the story. I should have thought the woman may be black, because I hadn't heard of it before. If she was white, I would have heard of it the first day she was missing.
I have no theory of why it's usually another race that the "victims" say kidnap them. But my thing is, are any of these stories involving so-called abductions of adult women ever true? I can't think of any right now. (That is if the woman is not famous or the child of someone famous.) Of course, it is different with children (usually). Many of these are random abductions.
one good thing to come out of this story would be to open a dialog about mental illness in the black community. we've been silent about this for too long and it's slowly destroying us.
She clearly has some problems & I hope they get worked out. When i first heard this story, I joked to myself about no one kidnapping Black people.
Bygbaby
My two (very unscientific) theories on why she did this, are both based on the fact that this was an obvious cry for attention and sympathy:
1. No one cares about black women being abducted; and the media and general public certainly don’t care when a black man commits a crime against a black woman. But like sex, when crime becomes racialized in America it tends to make the news and garner more public attention and sympathy. So by saying the crime was committed by a white man she captures everyone’s (i.e. the media and public) attention and sympathy. The attention and sympathy that she felt was lacking in her personal life.
2.When trying to set up her own “abduction story”, this woman may have been referencing the recent abduction and torture that took place of the young black lady at the hands of a white family. That case as we all know did garner a fair amount of sympathy and attention from the public and media towards the victim involved. However, by also saying that only white people abducted her might have sounded too similar to the case she borrowed from, and thus lessen the credibility of her story. So she got a little “creative”, and introduced a black character into her story.
P.S. - There is also a fair amount of guilt by people who create these types of stories – the more people you have believing your story, the more sympathy and notoriety you manage to gain, the less you have to think about the wrongdoing of your actions.
I've thought about this quite a bit. Not just with the two cases you mentioned, but Susan Smith with her kids, and Tawana Brawley and Crystal Gail Mangum with their accusations as well.
The best theory I can come up with is in the camp of those calling this a cry for help/sympathy/attention.
But by going to the next step, you ask "Whose elp/sympathy/attention, exactly, is it that these people crave?"
It would seem logical that the "cry" is targeted to those closest to the fabricator, who would presumably be of the same race.
Therefore, by identifying the perp as somebody of the opposite race, it ramps up that cry a notch louder. Ie., "Not only was I violated, but I was violated by a _____________," adding insult to injury.
Hardly a scientific theory, but the best I could do.
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