The Myers Park high school student
met a stranger in a chatroom
and he convinced her to leave home.
I first met Michael when I was 15
in a pro-anorexia chatroom.
He was pretending he had a disorder.
He was like, "Well, I could be your daddy,"
and that's our opening conversation.
He had me post nude photos on my Tumblr
of child porn and then delete them quickly
so that he could save them.
After about three days,
he kept talking about how much he loved runaways
and loved taking care of them
and treating them like princesses.
He manipulated me heavily.
He convinced me that if I wanted to be happy
I had to run away
and that I had no life outside of him.
He insinuated there would be a consensual
BDSM relationship, it was constant pressure.
He basically set the stage for me being like,
"Well, I could run away."
I gave him my address and he looked at maps
and chose a place for us to meet.
I did bail on the plan.
It was raining, I didn't want to walk
three miles in the rain.
He was very upset, he basically insinuated
that he was risking his life for this
and that me bailing was showing
that I had no respect for him and his life.
He convinced me to try again two days later
and if I didn't do it
I would never speak to him again.
The thought of never speaking
to him again terrified me.
That night, I ran late to our meeting.
I didn't know where I was going.
I didn't know his name.
I didn't know anything about him.
I had never seen him.
I knew the color car that he drove
and the road that he would be on
and that's all he gave me.
Honestly, I don't know what made me
go through with it.
How early on did you make the decision,
did you know in your mind,
"I'm going to meet this person."
Was this a last minute decision?
Last minute.
Or something that you contemplated awhile?
Last minute, it was like,
it was kind of a funny joke at first.
It was like a, "Ha ha, this is fun to fanaticize about,"
like, "I'm not actually gonna do it."
What pushed you over that line at the very end?
He pushed me really, really, really hard
and I just was impulsive and I was like, "Okay."
Once you were there, there's a tendency
to try and convince them that the world they left
doesn't care about them anymore.
Parents don't want you back,
they don't care about you, everybody's moved on.
You're just lost, isolated,
and this is the only place you have to be.
Did you hear that from him?
100%, immediately, almost immediately.
It was like, "I bet they're happier with you gone."
Two weeks in he was like,
"I don't see any media presence about you."
Stuff like that, like, "Nobody cares that you're gone,"
and he made sure to show me statistics
on arrested runaways and insinuate,
and heavily relay to me, that I would be
institutionalized or arrested if I left.
Did that get to ya'?
I believed it wholeheartedly from the beginning.
Once you started believing that,
did you think you would ever get outta there?
Or did you think that was your life?
I kinda knew from the beginning
that I was stuck.
I didn't know the area I was in.
I didn't have any contacts.
He kept his phone completely locked
and hidden away from me.
He kept his computer locked.
There was no way for me to get help
and I knew that immediately.
How did you get on the internet, eventually?
He had a trust system where,
after about a year, I was trusted with a device
that didn't have internet, it was locked
and I'm resourceful, I know how technology works
so I factory-data reset it
and deleted the app locker
that was locking the internet
and then I just connected it to mobile data.
(applauding)