After Cameron wanted Stan to become his second wife in 1984, this was a turning point for Janice.
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The docu-drama Girl in the Box is based on case of Colleen Stan, a hitchhiker who was kidnapped and held captive by Cameron Hooker in Tehama County back in 1977.
Over the years she was whipped, burnt, left dangling from the ceiling, raped, left naked for days and shocked by Mr Hooker.
It ended only once her captor’s wife helped her flee and reported her husband to police.
The coffin-like box that Colleen Stan was kept in for seven years.
At the time of her capture, the 20-year-old had been hitchhiking as a pretty normal way to explore and was on her way to a friend’s party when the North Carolina woman was picked up by a friendly looking couple.
“I learned I could go anywhere in my mind”, she says.
“I thought I was going to die”, Ms Stan, 59, told USA magazine People ahead of the release of a TV film of her ordeal, called “The Girl in the Box”. “You just remove yourself from the real situation going on and you go somewhere else”.
Ms Stan told People she would focus on pleasant thoughts and happy memories to help her cope with the horrific ordeal. “Whatever makes you happy”. District Attorney Gregg Cohen, who attended the parole board hearing said: “Colleen did great”, and that her statement to the board “was very powerful and effective”.
In January 1978, Hooker forced her to sign herself into slavery – and warned her that he was part of an organisation called ‘The Company’. “And you just run for it”. When not incarcerated Colleen became part of a odd new life as a live-in sex slave, family child-minder, and victim of Cameron’s freaky and extreme S&M fantasies.
Cameron Hooker in 1984 after his arrest for keeping Colleen Stan in a box as a sex slave for seven years.
While there was never enough evidence for murder charges against the second girl, Hooker was sentenced to 104 years jail for his treatment of Ms Stan, whose story will now be told through a U.S. telemovie to be released this weekend.
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Colleen’s ordeal has now been made into movie titled Girl in the Box, which will be releasing this weekend.
