Captive: The Sex Slave Girl - True Stories

12 November 2012

The astounding story of Tanya Kach, held prisoner for 10 years, made international headlines when she revealed she had been living in captivity, just a stone's throw from her home. True Stories gains key insight into how a 14-year-old girl vanished without trace, only to resurface a decade later, still living within the same community.

Now, with exclusive access, Tanya Kach recounts her 10 year hell and painstakingly describes how she came back ‘from the dead' and is still now, rebuilding her life.  For the first time, the many sides to this disturbing and tragic story are told through the key characters, including Tanya's estranged family, high school friends and the police who worked on the missing person investigation. And where many vehemently support Tanya's account, others reveal they have doubts surrounding the story.

In February 1996, 14-year-old Tanya Kach, from McKeesport, a small town outside Pittsburgh USA, left her parents' home for school, but never arrived. She had literally disappeared off of the face of the earth and for over 10 years the whereabouts of this missing girl remained a mystery. Investigative authorities had no real leads and Tanya seemed to have disappeared through the cracks of the system that was there to protect her. Then, incredibly, a decade later a local shop owner contacted police after a tearful young woman confided in him that she was the girl who had been given up for dead.

Tanya revealed that she had been kept as a sex slave by her school security guard, Thomas Hose, a man 24 years her senior, just two miles from her childhood home. She also told how for the first four years, she was confined to her captor's bedroom and never saw the light of day. Hose's young son also inhabited this small room in the run down two bedroom house, along with his elderly parents who were seemingly oblivious to Tanya's existence in their home.  At 18, Tanya says she was allowed to leave the house, assuming a new name and identity, and was able to go round her neighbourhood once again for short outings. Yet no-one in this small community recognised that this was the missing girl Tanya Kach.

Tanya's traumatic story of sexual abuse and deprivation for a decade shocked many, the world over, but also left many unanswered questions. Some friends and family doubted her extraordinary account; some even questioned the events that led to her abduction and captivity. How did Thomas Hose manage to hide Tanya from his parents who lived under the same roof? How did he control her to such an extent that he left her door unlocked and gave her access to a phone? The most serious allegations and gossip from some locals suggest that she instigated her disappearance and that she was not abducted at all.

Today, six years after her escape and aged 31, Tanya is combatting her detractors and advocating herself as the voice of child abuse victims everywhere whilst her captor Tom Hose serves a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.  The film also documents Tanya's daily struggles as she copes with her past and prepares to go back to her hometown to attempt to conquer her demons. Delving beyond the sensational headlines, this film explores the many layers of this extraordinary and harrowing case.

 

Prod Co: Bearkatt Productions
Dir/ Prod: Rob Farquhar
Prod: Edmond Buckley
Exec Prods: Alex Sutherland, Denise Castelli & Graham Ebbs
Comm Ed: Anna Miralis