Kara Robinson was just 15-years-old when she was abducted at gunpoint by a serial killer.
And now, in a new true-crime documentary on Oxygen and Hulu titled “Escaping Captivity: The Kara Robinson Story,” she is sharing the story of her abduction almost 20 years later.
“I want to help people,” she informed Fox News on why she decided to share her story now.
“I realized that if I was going to do that, I had to tell my story… I wanted to be in control of it. I wanted to make sure the story was told accurately. So I reached out to my friend [kidnapping survivor and child safety activist] Elizabeth Smart. I told her this is something I wanted to do. She recommended the team that I ended up working with and they have just been so fantastic through the process.”
The high school student was taken by her captor in broad daylight in her friend’s front yard in Columbia, SC, in 2002. She was then forced into a dark storage container and driven to his apartment where she was sexually assaulted repeatedly.
RELATED: Elizabeth Smart Reveals Kidnapping Story To Her Children
For a total of 18 hours, Robinson was held against her will. During the traumatic event, she was determined to take note of her surroundings, memorizing as many details as she could.
“We have this survival mechanism within all of us,” she revealed. “And I think it’s not anything you could control. But I think my body kicked into that survival mode. For me, I wanted to make sure that I gathered as much information as possible and wait for him to be complacent.”
“That was my way of fighting back,” she continued. “So I do think that fight or flight mechanism that we all have was a big part of my survival. And I also think – and I still am – a very strong-willed person. I did not want him to get the better of me.”
Thankfully, Robinson was able to free herself from her bindings while the man who took her fell asleep. She then fled and headed to a car in a parking lot. She begged the people inside to take her directly to police.
“It took a while for the relief to kick in,” she admitted. “Because my captor did run [after my escape]… So it was a slow process. But I really just wanted my life to get back to normal. I didn’t want anybody to treat me differently. The way I dealt with things was to just turn off all of my emotions. I didn’t have an emotional connection to this thing that had happened to me. I just wanted everybody to kind of forget it, too.”
To learn more about Robinson’s story, “Escaping Captivity: The Kara Robinson Story” today, Friday, October 15 at 10 a.m. ET on Oxygen. The special is also available for streaming on Hulu.
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