MOM’S LOVE HOLDS THE ANSWER
Book details quest to free daughter
It was December 2008, some 114 days into the captivity of her daughter, Amanda Lindhout, that Lorinda Stewart started planning the welcome home party. She bought perfume, pyjamas and pink wrapping paper. There would be pink helium balloons, a pink pinata and cotton candy to welcome her daughter when, not if, she returned home, Stewart decided.
When Lindhout was kidnapped in Somalia on Aug. 23, 2008, her mother also became a prisoner.
For 460 days, the length of her daughter’s captivity, Stewart was virtually chained to the Somalian criminals who had kidnapped her daughter, negotiating by phone in whatever guise was required: she was mom, friend, forgiver and toughest foe.
Stewart was her daughter’s best and only hope, drawing on reserves she did not know she had, maintaining calm even when her daughter sobbed and pleaded for her life: “Mom, they’re going to kill us.”
“‘One day closer’ was my mantra,” Stewart said in a phone interview with Postmedia from her home in Nelson, B.C. It’s also the title of the book Stewart has written, which recounts every agonizing detail of the quest to free her daughter.
While in captivity, Lindhout found solace visualizing an imaginary house in the sky she could drift into. Stewart imagined pink balloons, giddy with helium. “I guess my own house in the sky was that pink party.”
Stewart’s voice on the phone cracks and trembles.
She suffered from anxiety, PTSD and depression after the ordeal — and is now on a healing journey, hoping that her story will offer comfort to others in crisis.
Lindhout, now 36, was kidnapped at gunpoint along with Australian photographer Nigel Brennan near Mogadishu in 2008 when the duo was travelling to do a story on a displaced persons camp in Somalia. Lindhout had been building a career as a freelance journalist, filing stories from Iraq, and although she was aware of the dangers of travelling in Somalia, where piracy and kidnapping were common, she was compelled to cover the region, looking for stories that no one else had told.
Although Lindhout had taken appropriate precautions and hired a fixer, a local guide tasked with safety and transportation, Stewart had a “foreboding feeling” about the trip. But she had long since learned there was little to be gained from trying to dissuade her daughter.
At the time of Amanda’s kidnapping, Stewart was scraping by on a minimum wage job.
She grew concerned when she didn’t hear from Amanda for two days. Then Stewart’s ex-husband, Amanda’s father, Jon Lindhout, called, screaming that Amanda had been kidnapped. His driveway was filled with news trucks.
Stewart drove all day to his house in Sylvan Lake, Alta., where RCMP investigators were waiting. The kidnappers, an ad hoc group of Islamic extremist criminals, had already called and left a message demanding $1.5 million in ransom.
Stewart was living on the poverty line, and Amanda’s father was on disability. There was no money.
The officers explained that Canada has a no-ransom policy, but said hostage releases had been secured using benefits like social aid, schools and pharmaceuticals to win their freedom. It would be against the law for Amanda’s parents to fundraise for a ransom.
The RCMP team explained they needed someone to act as the primary contact and main negotiator with the kidnappers. Stewart, they felt, was the best choice.
“I wasn’t forced into it, but I chose to take on that role because I had the assurance that the RCMP would train me, and because I hoped that I would at times be connected to Amanda, and she would hear my voice and I would hear her voice,” said Stewart.
She would have the support of a professional negotiator alongside her at all times.
“My first call with Amanda, she sounded strong. We both felt very confident that it would be over soon. It was four days in.”
Stewart was also surprised when she first spoke with the principal negotiator for the Somali gang, who identified himself as “Adam.”
“My expectation was based on watching movies, that I was going to have this hostile man yelling at me and threatening me. He was soft-spoken, polite, thanking me, so that was a surprise. I felt like I could build a rapport with Adam and he would work with me.”
Over time, Adam terrorized Stewart, calling her day and night, threatening to marry Amanda or harm her. And although he was Stewart’s contact — and soon took to calling her “mom”— he was part of a larger cell of violent criminals holding Amanda and Nigel Brennan for financial gain.
The RCMP installed Stewart in a “command centre” in a secret location in Sylvan Lake, dubbed the SLOC. The windows were covered with cardboard, and no one entered unless they knew the password: Pink Cotton Candy.
“Speaking boards” were plastered on the walls with harrowing scripts to follow. If Amanda was being tortured: “You must protect her. She is your sister. I am doing everything I can to get the money.” And if the worst happened: “Do you have their body/bodies? You are responsible for returning their bodies to their families.”
“At first, we had total faith in the government,” said Stewart. She immersed herself in the process, learning about Somalia, and scrutinized video their captors released of Amanda and Nigel. Stewart was completely confined in the SLOC, and ordered not to speak to media or tell anyone what she was doing.
During her confinement, Stewart began to have flashbacks to her own history of childhood and domestic abuse, including the loss of a child when she was a teenage mother during an interlude with the Children of God cult. She took comfort in the camaraderie of the RCMP officers and had faith in her daughter’s feisty character — one that was not so different from her own.
As the months dragged on, the situation deteriorated and Stewart coped with terrifying rumours — that Amanda and Nigel had been sold to another group, that Amanda had given birth in captivity, that Amanda had tried to escape or been killed.
“The first really difficult conversation with Amanda was December 13, 2008. It was absolutely devastating. Amanda and I were both crying on the call, that was something that I was trying very hard not to do. I wanted her to hear my voice as strong and confident, but I knew from her voice and the way she was crying and begging that whatever was happening was very bad, very serious.”
By April, little progress had been made. The RCMP closed the SLOC and told Stewart that further negotiations would be managed by a team in Nairobi. “I felt abandoned by Ottawa,” said Stewart.
Stewart measures her words carefully when she talks about Ottawa’s no-ransom policy. “I can’t put a blanket statement on what Ottawa should or shouldn’t do, but in our case, one of the scariest parts about leaving Ottawa was that we really didn’t know who to trust or who to go to. It was the life of our daughter on the line.”
Amanda’s parents and Nigel Brennan’s family decided to hire the private security company AKE, led by John Chase, to try to rescue Amanda and Nigel. The decision was terrifying.
It was also the best decision the families could have made. After 460 days, and an ordeal that included beatings, starvation, torture and sexual assault, Lindhout and Brennan were freed on Nov. 25, 2009. The cost of nearly $1.2 million was shared between both families, with help from generous donors. Amanda’s parents sold everything they had and liquidated their meagre savings.
Stewart quickly learned that winning her daughter’s freedom did not guarantee a happy ending. There would be no pink party. “When I saw Amanda get out of that vehicle, I was feeling joy, relief and utter horror. It was clearly evident that she had not been treated well, that she had been starved. I could see the bruises on her ankles, where she had been chained. Her eyes looked so haunted. She was so weak she couldn’t stand up for very long, she needed a wheelchair. There wasn’t going to be any party. She was far too sick.”
Mother and daughter moved into a small home in Canmore, Alta. “When we came home I did not expect to have a huge breakdown, a dark depression, suicidal thoughts, lose my physical health. When I look back on it now, of course, all that stress was going to take a toll, but I was thinking I should be happy, we should be having parties, I don’t know why I’m feeling like this.”
Although Amanda was coping with severe PTSD, it was she who rescued her mother this time, and got her help. Both mother and daughter have been active in seeking therapy, healing and rebuilding their lives. After her release, Amanda wrote a bestselling book about her ordeal, A House in the Sky, founded the Global Enrichment Fund and has returned to Somalia to help rape survivors.
Now Stewart is hoping to help others.
“Lots of people ask me how did you get the strength to get through? The answer is so simple: it’s love. Love gives you the strength. I hope it is inspiring for other families in crisis of any kind.”
Mother, daughter and Nigel Brennan recently testified at the 10-day trial of Ali Omar Ader, the alleged kidnapper known as Adam. Ader was lured to Canada in an RCMP sting, arrested and charged with hostage-taking. Justice Robert Smith is expected to rule on the case in January.
“A lot of people have said to me that they hope the trial will bring closure,” said Stewart.
“To me, ultimately, closure happens with forgiveness, when the emotional charge from the experience is gone, and that’s still a work in progress for me.”