Kidnapping for Kicks

Newsday (New York, NY)

September 17, 2002 Tuesday

Carried Away by Need for Thrill;
Service will kidnap you - it's all legal, and raising hackles

By Tina Susman. STAFF WRITER

With his close-shorn hair, T-shirt and snappy silver cell phone clipped to the waistline of his jeans, Brock Enright looks like a lot of other 20-something New Yorkers gulping coffee at a SoHo diner.

On this cloudy weekday morning, though, the guileless-looking Enright is planning an abduction, and he's awaiting word from his cohorts that the time is right to grab the target. It could happen in the foyer of a building, in a garage, in the abductee's own home or in a public but secluded spot. A team specially chosen by Enright will grab the prey, then bind and gag him with duct tape and take him into hiding for a few hours, a couple of days, or longer.

When he goes free, he won't call the police or the FBI. He won't try to recoup any money Enright makes off the job. He'll just take the little bag of necessities that the kidnappers will give him - a bag containing money to get home, his ID and a bit of food - and return to a life that in his mind, at least, was sorely in need of adventure.

That's why he will have paid Enright at least $1,500, and probably closer to $3,000 to $4,000, for an abduction and hostage experience, complete with strong-arm tactics, deprivation, threats and whatever abuse he can tolerate. Sex is out, but just about anything else goes, says Enright, an artist and entrepreneur who launched his macabre business a few months ago.

"There's this extreme sports aspect to it," said Enright, 26, describing his clients as men and a few women in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are willing and able to pay for adventure but unwilling or unable to take genuine risks, either for psychological or personal reasons. "They're control freaks who want to lose control. They want to get away from their everyday lives without having to do it themselves."

Given the recent rash of well-publicized child abductions, and the still-fresh memories of foreign hostage situations that ended in death - Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, and Kansas missionary Martin Burnham in the Philippines, among them - it's no surprise Enright's business has critics. They include police, who fear that one of the staged kidnappings could go wrong and lead to injury or death. As long as Enright's customers pay for the service, however, and agree to be grabbed and held, there's nothing illegal about it, says NYPD spokesman Mike Collins.

Even so, professionals who work on real abduction cases say the idea of making money by simulating violent abductions is repellent, particularly with the public so jittery about terrorism threats and child snatchings.

"I'm all for bringing thrills into life, but I think this crosses the line," said Jerry Nance of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which investigates cases of long-term missing children. Many have been gone more than 20 years. "I guess it's inevitable that no matter what is happening in the world, no matter how tragic it is to society, somebody's going to try to figure out a way they can make a buck off of it. There's no law against felony stupidity."

If he's bothered by such criticism, Enright, who looks like a young, softer-featured Anthony Perkins, doesn't show it. He also shows no interest in delving into the supposed therapeutic value that many clients see in his service. To Enright, it's a job, and his clients are "everyday people," often with families and full-time jobs, who might also get their kicks on Internet chat sites or playing paintball. In fact, one of the most remarkable things about Enright is how utterly unremarkable he seems as he discusses his business and himself.

Raised in Virginia Beach, Va., Enright calls his own life relatively uneventful and draws a blank when asked about his most perilous moment. He even has trouble coming up with his life's most exciting event and finally cites a recent trip to Italy and Turkey, the first time he had traveled abroad. Fake abductions began as a schoolboy prank, Enright says. If a friend wanted to skip school, Enright would abduct the friend so he had to miss school.

By the time he came to New York four years ago to pursue a master of fine arts degree at Columbia, Enright had begun videotaping staged abductions of friends and producing them as art projects. A showing of some videos, along with his sculpting and other work, in a Brooklyn gallery in June prompted enough calls from hostage wannabes that Enright went into business. He calls his company Videogames because of the video camera that records each abduction. So far, he says he has carried out about 30 abductions, and business is booming enough that during one recent week he had seven cases pending.

While customers come seeking everything from thrills to assistance in confronting personal fears, Enright, who conducts extensive interviews before agreeing to take them on, says they all have one thing in common. "I can tell there's something in them that wants to pop," he said. "They don't really want to commit to danger fully, but they still want to experience danger, so you organize it."

Another common thread, said Enright, is the fear that clients admit to when the ordeal is over - a fear that begins from the moment they sign a contract and hand over their daily schedules, keys to their homes, and whatever else he might need to carry out an abduction. While they know they will be grabbed, they don't know precisely when, where, how or by whom. "Everything becomes suspect," said Enright, who has snatched people in bed, on the street as they leave the gym, even in their bathrooms.

Randy Wilcox awoke from an evening nap to find several masked intruders in his apartment. "The beginning was pretty intense because all these guys came in with masks. I didn't know exactly what to expect. I guess I wasn't prepared for all those people, and that was scary," said Wilcox, who had signed up for an abduction three or four days earlier. He opted for a brief ordeal: the attackers bound him tightly with duct tape, almost mummifying him, then taped him to the floor and eventually abandoned him there. He was discovered several hours later by a friend.

For Wilcox, the experience was intended to be therapeutic. Severe depression had not been relieved by medication or traditional therapy, said the 25-year-old temp worker. "I felt like this was more life-affirming, that maybe it would put me closer to an appreciation for banality, for the simple things in life," said Wilcox, who insists he was so shaken that he suffered post-traumatic stress afterward.

Enright's longest case so far has involved a man who spent a week bound and blindfolded to measure his tolerance for mental and physical discomfort. Lately, more and more people are using the experience as a way of testing their abilities to escape, said Enright, adding that no one so far has gotten away from the abductors. There have been some close calls, however, such as the time two friends were abducted together. The one who had organized the abduction had failed to tell her friend that it was planned, something that had to be hastily explained after the grab had taken place. One client described being bound to a chair and hitting his head hard on the floor when it was shoved over accidentally by one of his abductors.

Such incidents worry Enright's critics, who wonder how long it will be before an abduction goes awry and someone gets hurt or killed. "People might think they're witnessing a real abduction and either attempt to intervene or call the police," said Nance, a former police officer. "If I saw something like that going on, the response could be that you think the person being abducted is in harm's way, and that entitles a police officer to use deadly force."

Enright insists he keeps abductions out of the public's eye to avoid such scenarios and adds that he never intended the business to be a lifelong endeavor. Like a work of performance art, he says his goal is to build it up to a certain level and then, when the mood strikes, end it.

If he has any personal opinions about his clients, such as why they don't test their mettle by traveling to foreign lands or climbing mountains, he won't say, but he displays a certain level of scorn in the post-abduction gifts that each client receives. They include T-shirts printed with the client's most memorable utterances during the experience. Enright's favorites: "I cried three times" and "Mommy."

Comments

[RICHARD HAMMOND]

I
remember shanina gilmore from Hatch middle school she was nice but for some reason
not like the rest kind of
girl i new from the day i met shanina that something was wrong but just as well as many other
couldnt quess what it was i never asked her what she was going thru becuase i felt as though i didnt no her well enough to be asking her about her personal life
shanina never realy talked to anybody and often looked sad / pissed off or should i say giving off the impression that she diddnt take no crap now that shes gone i have learned that its ok to be a little newzy becuase some times u beig the newzy person could save a persons life
all though i bairly new her she is very missed and almost everyone who i no who remembers her wishes that they could have did something wich would have made things turn out better for shanina ma reason for sending this comment is to try to get the word out there to all teens and adults who no someone rather there close to them or not dont be afraid to ask question or report things to someone over u
Thanks.. Richard

[mujju]

i enjoy reading articles like this. i hope you will find good educational baby toys
for your child.