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He’s a wiry fifth-grader who looks you in the eye when he talks to you and spends most of his free time outside, playing sports.
About a month ago, he was in the backyard of his family’s home near Centralia feeding the dog when a masked man grabbed him and tried to carry him off.
But with no suspect in the case and rumors circulating that the boy made the whole thing up, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department took an action they say is unusual: They asked the boy to take a lie-detector test.
He passed, but his family says the result has been a double trauma for him, recovering from a close call with a terrifying abductor and trying to understand why people don’t believe him.
“When you have to sit there and watch your child be questioned on something that was so traumatizing, you don’t know what that’s like,” the boy’s mother said. (Neither the parents or the boy are identified in this story to protect his identity because he is a minor.)
“Public opinion in a small community, around the school, around the barber shop, you just start hearing this rumor that maybe he made it up,” Boone County Sheriff’s Detective Mike Stubbs said.
Stubbs said the Sheriff’s Department was pressured to make sure the boy wasn’t lying, so detectives met with the family about the boy taking a lie-detector test. The family agreed.
Stubbs said the boy was given a Computerized Voice Stress Analysis test. The test, which is not accepted in court, is almost never given to crime victims, he said. It is typically used as an investigative resource to eliminate potential suspects from a criminal investigation, he said.
The subject of the test is asked to respond into a microphone, both truthfully and deceptively, to obvious questions like “What color is the wall?”
A machine measures key elements in the subject’s voice and compares responses to the control questions with those of actual questions.
“The operator talked to him, explained it to him,” Stubbs said. “By the time they went through the preliminary stuff he was pretty relaxed and took it like a champ. The results came out showing that he was being truthful.”
But the boy’s mother said her son was so upset he started to cry before he took the test.
“He broke down because he couldn’t understand why this had happened to him and why people didn’t believe him,” she said.
Centralia Mayor Jerry Parmeley said Centralia’s reaction to the boy’s report is evidence of a community in denial. “I think people want Centralia to be a town where big city crime doesn’t happen,” he said. “Centralia is growing, and we’re going to have our share of big city crimes, things like child abductions, rapes, murders, crimes that you pretty well associate with more populated areas.”
To make matters worse, rumors fly in Centralia, like they do in most small towns, Parmeley said.
Centralia Police Chief Sam Hartsell said there’s no doubt some small-town people think they’re safe from crime, but he knows from 32 years of law enforcement in several towns that crime can happen anywhere.
The boy’s father said he understands that people talk, but he doesn’t like the blaming.
“It’s easier for them to face the concept that he’s lying than the truth,” the boy’s father said. “You can speculate, but you can’t point fingers.”
The family is still struggling to cope with the abduction attempt, which began with a routine chore.
“We got home from the store because we were out of dog food, and then he went out back to feed the dog,” the boy’s mother said. “That’s his chore, feeding the dog.”
“When I went out there I heard something,” the boy said. “At first I thought it was a rabbit. Then he comes out of nowhere and picked me up. He had his hand over my mouth with a cloth.”
“I’m in his arms like this,” the boy said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Then he get gets ready to throw me over the fence. I was squirming around trying to get free, and that’s when I punched him in the face.”
Meanwhile, the boy’s father had come outside and was walking in the front yard and calling for him. It was about 7 p.m., and pitch dark, he said. On an aerial photo of the property hanging in a hallway of the family’s house, he pointed out what was happening as he told the story.
“I heard him scream, and took off running toward the back of the yard,” the boy’s father said.
“He was closed in on the left side by the treeline,” he said, pointing to a line of pine trees along the side of the property.
The boy’s father said he was running from the front yard toward the backyard, so the only place for the abductor to go was over the fence in the backyard.
Maj. Tom Reddin of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department said in an interview a few days after the abduction attempt that he presumed the assailant dropped the boy because of the boy’s struggling and the parents’ shouting.
Nights aren’t as restful for the family as they used to be. The boy’s father said that when he hears a noise at night, he stays awake for hours. His younger son was afraid to go outside for a while and even afraid to go upstairs alone for a few days.
A counselor meets with the boy at school once a week, and the parents plan to join their son for counseling sessions eventually.
While some community members gossiped, the boy’s father said that 90 percent of the community had been supportive. His frustration that no one has been arrested is mitigated by his son’s safety.
“We’re thankful that he’s here,” he said.
Stubbs said there is a statistical likelihood that if there was a kidnapper or pedophile who tried to abduct the boy, the perpetrator will strike again or has struck before.
Reddin said he didn’t know if the man knew the boy or his family.
According to a 1997 report by the National Incident-Based Reporting System, 24 percent of kidnappings are committed by a stranger.
He said another possibility at this point in the investigation is that someone did it as a prank and added that if this person came forward, no charges would be pressed.
Show Me the Errors 
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