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Kidnapped Teenager Rescued After Reaching Out For Help In Among Us - The 17-year-old victim was rescued after contacting a player they met in Among Us, over 500 days after they were kidnapped (kotaku.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 80 points 3 days ago (29 children)

I was thinking the same thing, how does she have access to Among Us and able to exchange social media contacts but not able to someway contact the police directly?

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  • [–] 72 points 3 days ago (13 children)

    maybe that was too obvious to her captor and maybe a game flew under the psycho's radar, giving just enough cover and time to ask for help

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  • [–] 15 points 2 days ago (12 children)

    Yea, don't think that's it:

    Authorities then set up a video call with the kidnapped teenager, during which the victim recounted Harmel’s abuse during the 18 months she was held in captivity.

    There's something about this that doesn't add up.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 days ago (11 children)

    Honestly I think you just need to stop assuming a kid in this situation is going to react logically. I guarantee she just wanted to contact someone she knew and she had an old friend from school on among us and used that. Also, for the people suggesting email, it's actually a lot harder to make an email these days than you'd think. Especially on the services that most people know about.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Exactly. How would she even log into Gmail?

    First 2FA, now passwordless.

    Disabling all the verification promots on known devices is next to impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    If she needed to create an account because she didnt know her password after 500 days being captive then it would be even worse. Sometimes its not even possible because they do a device scan and if your phone doesn't meet their requirements you can't make the account.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 days ago (8 children)

    I'm not making any assumptions, though you are since you didn't read the article (this was someone the met in Among Us), and you are assuming I'm victim blaming (could he some off-the-wall coercion). I know nothing of the situation, or the child, but 500 days as a 16/17 year old is not a normal kidnapping. I.E. something does not add up.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    I know nothing of the situation, or the child, but 500 days as a 16/17 year old is not a normal kidnapping. I.E. something does not add up.

    We're obviously not talking about "kidnap and ransom" case here. We're talking about someone being sex trafficked. They were not holding that girl for money.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    No, we're not, this is you assuming again. The article states a single abuser, and has kidnapping in the title, thus my description. Please just read the article.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    I did read the article. I also have common sense. This clearly seems like a man abducted a girl to use as his sex slave. Kidnapping does not imply a ransom. No ransom was mentioned. And really, in 2026, one person is not going to be able to pull off a kidnapping and ransom. There's a reason they almost never happen anymore; there's just too many ways for the kidnapper to get caught in the process of contacting the victim's family and actually collecting the ransom. Today, kidnapping and ransom only really happens in places around the world where the police are in full cooperation with the gangs, like in cartel-held regions of Mexico.

    The reason the situation seems odd to you is that you're fixated on this being a kidnapping and ransom. This was a case of sex trafficking. It's the only explanation that matches the fact pattern:

    • 500 days in captivity.
    • No mention of any ransom or police manhunt.
    • A single individual apparently responsible for the whole thing.
    • The use of the word "predator" in the article.
    • The mention of her abuse over the months in captivity.

    The most likely explanation is a man kidnapping a girl to keep her as a sex slave in his basement. If there were any ransom attempt, there would have been a huge manhunt, and it would have been a huge media circus. You don't think we would have heard about a 16 year old (likely) white girl being kidnapped and ransomed? The media lives for that shit.

    This was just derived from the article and common sense. But I went ahead and did some more searching. There are other articles out there with more information. For example, this one.

    Adam Hunter Harmel faces a federal count of transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity following his arrest in eastern Oregon

    Sounds like sex slavery to me.

    The affidavit details severe physical and sexual abuse throughout the girl's confinement. Harmel allegedly slept in the same basement bed as the teenager, keeping a knife beneath his pillow and forcing her to sleep against the wall to prevent her escape. Authorities said Harmel repeatedly assaulted and struck the girl, expressed a desire to start a family, and forced her to remove her orthodontic braces using pliers so she could not be identified.

    Yeah. She was trafficked. A monster abducted her, held her in his basement, and tried to force her to be his "wife." He's literally being charged with both kidnapping and sexual abuse. Have a little more common sense.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    I did read the article, but unlike you I have reading comprehension.

    More recently, Harmel gave the victim a new phone without cellular data. However, the teenager was able to connect to Wi-Fi via the phone and used it to access the online game Among Us. The victim then seemingly used Among Us’ in-game chat function to contact another teenager in a lobby. The two exchanged social media details.

    She contacted them in a lobby. It does not state that is where they met. They used the lobby chat to talk and exchange social media handles. She likely had to make new ones on this new phone to use. Nowhere does it state they did not know eachother before, but the fact that the teenager was able to contact her mother, as the article also states, implies to me that they had some sort of connection to her prior to the kidnapping. Perhaps I am wrong about that but nowhere does the article say otherwise.

    You are very much crashing out right now btw. You don't seem to even realize that @isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone is not me. And your reaction to me saying not to assume a kid in this situation would react logically is to get offended that I'm accusing you of "victim blaming". When all I'm doing is pointing out that kids don't always do things the way we might expect since they don't have the life experience we do.

    Take a breath.

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  • [–] 39 points 3 days ago (14 children)

    Yeah, my old phone has no sim but still has 911 capabilities. It even scrolls the message "No SIM card - emergency calls only" across the top of the phone. I think it might be the law here, all phones whether cell enabled or not have 911 access.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 days ago (13 children)

    I was watching a movie the other day and it got me wondering... How do the movie sets prevent cell phones from actually dialing 911 when the actor needs to call them in the script.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    For 911 calls, and most calls actually, they almost never show the screen of the phone being dialled anyway. They just show the actor tapping at the phone vaguely while the camera shows them from the side or the back with an intense expression, and then suddenly they hold it up to their ear and then they act like they're talking to 911.

    And if for some reason they really do have to show the screen, they will just use a non-functional phone with a fake app or graphical effects in post-production, the same way they make ghosts and dragons appear and spaceships come crashing out of the sky, etc. A phone screen is a trivial effort to fake.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    I can't remember which show I was watching last night (tried a few of them and gave up on all cause everything is seemingly terrible nowadays).

    But I commented because that thought specifically camemto mind since I watched them dial 911 exactly on the screen and press the green dial button and see the screen switch to "calling 911" or whatever it does which is what triggered my question.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Maybe airplane mode, if not a fake app. Doing it in effects would be the same effort of recreation with way more extra work for worse results. If it matches an actual dialers modern design, rule of least effort would say airplane mode or similar. Else, fake dialer.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

    No idea if this was used for any film, but you may make your own GSM "tower". Though it needs to be powerful enough that the phone won't decide to roam to something else, and that might be a regulatory issue.

    Also could use a fake phone app. Or a fake phone...

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

    With those resources you can get a custom SIM card for your custom tower (it's actually not super expensive for basic ass devices with some dozen meters range) and then fake absolutely everything, and it won't disrupt any real devices

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

    Emergency calls ignore roaming settings and usually connect without checking subscription, no? Unless the SIM is so invalid the towers reject it explicitly. Or the phone is old and invalid, which is fucked up but a thing that's possible.

    Almost forgot that the US doesn't have plain GSM anymore though, so there's that.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago*

    Emergency calls will go to your own carrier first, but if you have no SIM your phone will attempt to connect to any available carrier arbitrarily which offers emergency services and that carrier will accept the emergency call

    That's why faking your own carrier with your own basestation and using a custom SIM to make your phone use it would prevent real emergency calls. (beware, doing it to others' phones is very illegal)

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