Patty Hearst

by Read Listen Learn

February 4th, 1974. In the Hibernian Bank on Noriega Street, San Francisco, it was just another day, until a small group of people walked in, wearing raincoats. Suddenly, they took out automatic weapons from under their coats – rifles and pistols – and began to shout and scream at staff and customers. This was a bank robbery but the robbers were far from typical. They were not common criminals and the money they stole from the bank would not be for them personally. It was to finance the revolution. The armed robbers were members of a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army, or S.L.A. It was an urban, left-wing terrorist group who wanted to change society. They also had a Black Power message but only the leader, Donald De Freeze, was actually black. Many of them had been recruited out of prisons by a radical, left-wing organisation.

They had 'gone active’ before this, and the San Francisco Police and the F.B.I. knew who they were and where they came from. But, this time, there was a surprise: one of the robbers, wielding a large gun and screaming at the people to lie on the floor, was Patty Hearst, the nineteen-year-old daughter of an extremely rich and powerful family. She had been kidnapped by the S.L.A. only a few weeks earlier and now here she was, part of a team of revolutionary bank robbers, risking their lives and those of others in their war to bring socialism to America, by any means necessary.

She didn’t seem to be frightened in the security video the F.B.I. played over and over again as they tried to assess her psychological condition and judge if she was under any threat from other members of the robbery team. But it didn’t seem so, it really didn’t.

What had happened in the time between her kidnapping and her mysterious reappearance as a willing bank robber and self-styled 'urban guerrilla'? Her whole mind-set had apparently changed. The rich and privileged white girl from a conservative and actively right-wing family had absolutely and completely gone over to the enemy. The bank she helped rob belonged to the family of her best friend from school.

There had been signs of it not long after her abduction by the S.L.A. The group demanded that her super-rich father give every poor person in California $70 – this would cost him $400,000,000. Instead, Hearst distributed $6m dollars' worth of food in poor neighbourhoods. The S.L.A. did not release Patty and, also, added that the food had been of very low quality. The shock came when a statement from Patty herself agreed with her captors, criticised her parents in other ways too, and politically complained about the rich in general.

Other statements came out and she let it be known to the press that she was with the S.L.A. now and her revolutionary name would be 'Tania'. While she remained in the hands of the S.L.A., it was hard for the police or her family to know how many of these statements were made under duress. Of course, that seemed the obvious answer, and the idea that she had undergone some form of psychotic 'change of self' seemed absurd, until the bank raid.

Now, she was wanted by the police for very serious crimes. It didn’t matter who her father was, the F.B.I. couldn’t just pretend she hadn’t been in the bank raid, hadn’t been pushing a military weapon in people’s faces. It took about six month to track her down. The police arrested her in a San Francisco apartment with another S.L.A. member, Wendy Yoshimura. At her trial, everything revolved around whether she had been brain-washed and, if she had, to what extent she could be pardoned for her serious crimes.

Expert witness followed expert witness, now for the prosecution, now for the defence. One lot saying that her few weeks of imprisonment by the S.L.A. had left her confused and ready to join the new group of people in which, like it or not, she found herself. Some said she was a free-thinking adult and she must take responsibility for her actions, even under stress. Others pointed out that, only fifteen years earlier, in the Korean War, the Chinese had very successfully brain-washed a number of American prisoners of war by putting them alone into a small group of Chinese political officers. Isolation from their usual companions and the Chinese tactic of being friendly and hostile by turns while constantly verbally indoctrinating them was very effective at turning battle-hardened US soldiers into loyal Chinese communists. What chance did a nineteen-year-old girl have when treated in much the same way, or worse, by a group of her fellow Americans?

Still, the judge decided that she must go to prison. If he accepted these complex psychological excuses from her, why not from anyone committing a crime in groups or gangs? Patty Hearst served about two years in prison. Since then, she has married the man who was her bodyguard after her arrest. She wrote an autobiography and, perhaps taking advantage of her notoriety, she took a couple of small acting roles.

What happened to Patty Hearst is well known in the world of forensic psychology and has been linked with a psychological condition called 'Stockholm Syndrome’. This describes what sometimes happens when kidnap victims come to like and sympathise with their captors. In Patty Hearst's case, of course, the kidnap victim became a willing and active member of the gang that captured her. This phenomenon has been observed in many situations with many types of people but, young women or adolescent girls seem to be more vulnerable to this kind of brain-washing.

The reasons may be anthropological and buried in the pre-history of our species. Primitive humans are 'exogamous ' or, in other words, girls go to other groups when they marry – join their new husband’s people. Boys will stay with their original group and bring their bride home. This means that, for many hundreds of thousands of years, girls could expect to make a sudden change of family, community, culture and even language. Many women were victims of raids and were, essentially, abducted, raped and held life-long prisoner. For women in these conditions, the only psychological defence is to 'get with the program’: learn the new language and culture, learn to love your new 'husband ' and make great show of your loyalty to the new group in case anyone thinks your loyalties are with your old people, the enemy.

It’s a survival mechanism in a real and cruel world and, when the circumstances of a 'wife-raid’ are reproduced in modern society, it could trigger deeply programmed responses. Luckily, as was shown with Patty Hearst, it only takes a few weeks to switch back again, quite naturally and without any brain-washing.

In 2002, President Clinton granted Patty Hearst a full pardon just as he left office.