Rudy Farias’ aunt Sylvia Sanchez Lopez is photographed with a picture of her nephew on her phone. Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP
- Rudy Farias has spoken out for the first time since the eight-year missing person case became public.
- Houston police say Farias was at mom’s house the entire time. On Wednesday Farias called this house “prison”.
- “I just wanted to be free,” he said, calling himself a victim of “Stockholm Syndrome.”
Rudy Farias – the “missing” Houston man who police say has been at home since he ran away for a single day eight years ago – has given his first interview since the bizarre case last week became known and told reporters that his home was a “prison.” “
“It’s like living in a prison,” he told local Fox affiliate Houston. “I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to live my life.”
In the half-hour interview, Farias, whose face was covered at his request, threw a sometimes tearful dig at his mother Janie Santana, in whose home he said he remained a hidden prisoner.
Santana held him down for years, he said, not through physical violence or locked doors but through the sheer force of her threats and “negativity.”
“Honestly, I was only being held against my will, mentally and not physically,” he said. “She was constantly bombarding me with negative thoughts.”
As he left home, he was apparently forced to work under an assumed name: “12-hour shifts, seven days a week, and I get $60,” he claimed, using a beeping profanity between the words sixty and dollars.
Farias also wanted to clarify: He did not have sex with his mother.
Last week, a Houston-based activist, Quanell, narrated
Santana tried to blur lines, Farias said.
“You know, it’s just boundaries that she imposes or that make me uncomfortable,” he said. if I said stop and she says well why? Why? Why?” he said in mock imitation.
“,What have I done? I didn’t do anything wrong!’” he said Santana would protest.
“And I would just be a people lover. But I had no people to please, only my mother,” he added. “It was just her, her, her the whole time. My mother.”
Santana warned him that if he showed up again, the police would throw him in jail, Farias said, describing himself as a victim of “Stockholm Syndrome” at her hands.
Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV was found alive eight years after he disappeared while walking his dogs at the age of 17. Texas Center for the Missing
“She manipulated me into saying I would be arrested for speeding,” he said in an interview. “Honestly, it just felt like brainwashing.”
Once he was actually pulled over while driving his mother in her car, he said. “She told me to say something else. Say another name because they will arrest you,” he said.
Houston Police Department Lieutenant Christopher Zamora told reporters last week that Farias and Santana had “previous HPD interactions” in which patrol officers were given false names and dates of birth.
Farias hid when family and friends stopped by, he told the broadcaster.
“I was stuck at home,” he said. “Someone came up, my mum just told me to stay in the room, keep the doors locked and not let them in. Don’t make any noise.”
Farias’ reappearance was announced over the weekend of July 4 by two Texas-based missing persons organizations.
“It’s him!” read a Facebook post that family members believe was written by his mother. “It’s our Rudy,” the post said, claiming it was found slumped in front of a church across from his home in northeast Houston.
He was covered in bruises old and new and too traumatized to speak, the post said.
The amazing story of the reappearance, which was reported in the press across the country, soon unraveled. Houston police said in a news conference that the then 18-year-old actually returned home the day after his mother reported him missing in 2015.
“Mother Janie continued to deceive the police,” Lt. Christopher Zamora of the Houston Police Department.
Four private investigators who worked on the original missing persons case tell insiders there have always been red flags. The only clues to his whereabouts had been provided by Santana, his mother. None could be independently confirmed and all were wild car chases, they said.
Santana has not responded to repeated attempts to reach her via phone and email. She was not charged in the disappearance.
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