@i-am-insane said:

Side note, but I’m pretty sure Stockholm syndrome was disproved, because the robbers were relatively normal people, and the police were such assholes the people ‘afflicted’ just didn’t want to help them.

This is correct. The police were incompetent and endangered the lives of the hostages, and afterwards one of the hostages (a woman) told reporters “At least the robbers expressed some concern for our safety.” The police were indignant and smeared the hostages as emotionally unstable and brainwashed by the robbers.

“Stockholm Syndrome” might have been forgotten as baseless slander but a couple of years later the Patty Hearst trial was all over the media and defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey (whom you might remember from the OJ Simpson trial) tried to use a “brainwashing” defense for Hearst, who had actively participated in crimes committed by her kidnappers. The defense failed, but the “syndrome” was implanted in the public consciousness.

Handled