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1. Gregory Jean Jr.
Gregory's father and stepmother withdrew him from school on the pretense of homeschooling him when he was 9. However, for the next four years, he was kept captive in their home. His mother, a Haitian immigrant, notified Child Protective Services but not the police, so they didn't know he was missing. Gregory managed to get himself rescued by rigging up a cell phone to allow him to send his mother a Facebook friend request. When police showed up, they came up empty. But a second visit, this time with directions via text from Gregory, found him hidden behind a false wall.
2. Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki
Captured and held for two years by Boko Haram in an incident that made headlines around the globe, Amina was rescued by a local vigilante group. "When we arrived at the house, the door was closed, I asked the mother to come and identify someone, the moment she saw her, she shouted her name," the group's leader told the BBC. "She gave her the biggest hug ever, as if they were going to roll on the ground, we had to stabilize them."
3. Steven Stayner
Steven was abducted by a known pedophile when he was 7 years old and held captive for 8 years. When his captor abducted another young boy, Steven resolved to escape with him. The pair hitchhiked for 40 miles before finding the police and reuniting with their families. Sadly, Steven passed away in a motorcycle accident when he was 24.
4. Jaycee Dugard
Jaycee Dugard was 11 years old when Phillip and Nancy Garrido shocked her with a stun gun and bundled into their car. She endured 18 years of unspeakable horrors in a shed in their yard before being rescued.
5. Tanya Kach
Tanya was 13 and had a troubled home life with her father and his girlfriend when a 37-year-old security guard at her school struck up a friendship. After convincing her to run away from home, he ended up keeping her locked in his bedroom — in the home he shared with his parents — for 10 years. Eventually, he started allowing her out. She was rescued after she alerted a shopkeeper to her identity while running an errand.
6. Shawn Hornbeck
When he was 11, Shawn Hornbeck was taken while riding his bike down a gravel road near his home in Missouri. Rather than keeping him hidden away, Shawn's captor controlled him through fear and abuse all while allowing him out in public. He was found four years later, four days after his captor came home with another boy.
7. Carlina White
Carlina was abducted from a Harlem hospital when she was just 19 days old by a woman posing as a nurse. Carlina knew that woman as her mother and her own name as Netty Nance. She didn't learn the truth until she was 23 years old, when she saw a photo online that looked exactly like her own daughter. Of course, that photo was her as a baby, as a DNA test proved.
8. Steve Carter
Amazingly, inspired by Carlina's story, Steve also solved his own kidnapping. He had always thought he was an orphan, but one day he found a picture of himself on a missing children website. It turned out he had been abducted by his mother and his name had been changed from Marx Panama Barnes. His father had been searching for him for 30 years.
9. Natasha Ryan
Natasha disappeared from her home in Australia when she was 14 years old. She reappeared four years later, when a man was on trial for her murder, after a tip-off led to a raid on the home of her boyfriend, who was eight years older than her. The two later married and have a son together.
10. Julian Hernandez
Julian was only 5 years old when his father kidnapped him, but he didn't know he'd been abducted. He only realized when, at 18, he started applying for colleges and discovered that the Social Security number his father had given him was fake.
11. Xiao Yun
Presumed dead for 10 years, Chinese woman Xiao Yun was found in a Chinese internet cafe when she was 24. After an argument with her parents, she ran away from home and spent the next decade living and playing games in internet cafes around the country.
12. Connie McCallister
When she was 16, Wisconsin-native Connie McCallister met up with her boyfriend, Freddie Ruiz, in Chicago, where he drugged her and drove her to Mexico. She spent the next nine years trapped in Mexico, abused at Freddie's hands, and then at the hands of another boyfriend, before meeting her husband. After meeting an American missionary while working at Walmart, Connie finally made her way home.
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