Why “It’s Never Too Late” Can De-Escalate Captors (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: And I wanted to say to whoever has her or knows where she is, it's never too late. And you're not lost or alone.

[00:00:17] Speaker 2: She's playing to the captor. So she's actually trying to provide him a little bit of a safe psychological off ramp to his current actions. Because she says two interesting things in there. One, you are not alone, which is interesting, because she's trying to appeal to his isolation, and offer him a little bit of thread of connection. And the second thing she says, very interestingly enough, is it is not too late.

[00:00:44] Speaker 1: Right?

[00:00:45] Speaker 2: She's trying to provide him lower the cost to him psychologically to provide information about her whereabouts.

[00:00:52] Speaker 1: And we believe in the essential goodness of every human being. It's never too late.

[00:01:00] Speaker 2: These villains in their mind, these captors have done these heinous things. They don't want to view themselves as monsters. They want to view themselves as justified in their actions. So similarly, what Savannah is trying to do is give him a safe out that's psychologically acceptable him and appeal to that small part of them, which may still have some good and want to do the right thing.