More recently, Harmel gave the victim a new phone without cellular data. However, the teenager was able to connect to Wi-Fi via the phone and used it to access the online game Among Us. The victim then seemingly used Among Us’ in-game chat function to contact another teenager in a lobby. The two exchanged social media details
All phones can, and all networks in the US and EU at least are legally required to accept emergency calls from any phone, if it’s in their network or not, or if it has a simcard or not.
The SIM card only acts to identify you, it is not technically necessary to place any call
now that’s just not true, or at least can be made not true. There is no technical measure preventing someone from flashing a ROM that completely blocks 911 and other special numbers, or be like postmarketOS on quite a few phones and don’t support calls at all.
I was thinking the same thing, how does she have access to Among Us and able to exchange social media contacts but not able to someway contact the police directly?
Authorities then set up a video call with the kidnapped teenager, during which the victim recounted Harmel’s abuse during the 18 months she was held in captivity.
Honestly I think you just need to stop assuming a kid in this situation is going to react logically. I guarantee she just wanted to contact someone she knew and she had an old friend from school on among us and used that. Also, for the people suggesting email, it’s actually a lot harder to make an email these days than you’d think. Especially on the services that most people know about.
If she needed to create an account because she didnt know her password after 500 days being captive then it would be even worse. Sometimes its not even possible because they do a device scan and if your phone doesn’t meet their requirements you can’t make the account.
I’m not making any assumptions, though you are since you didn’t read the article (this was someone the met in Among Us), and you are assuming I’m victim blaming (could he some off-the-wall coercion). I know nothing of the situation, or the child, but 500 days as a 16/17 year old is not a normal kidnapping. I.E. something does not add up.
I know nothing of the situation, or the child, but 500 days as a 16/17 year old is not a normal kidnapping. I.E. something does not add up.
We’re obviously not talking about “kidnap and ransom” case here. We’re talking about someone being sex trafficked. They were not holding that girl for money.
No, we’re not, this is you assuming again. The article states a single abuser, and has kidnapping in the title, thus my description. Please just read the article.
I did read the article. I also have common sense. This clearly seems like a man abducted a girl to use as his sex slave. Kidnapping does not imply a ransom. No ransom was mentioned. And really, in 2026, one person is not going to be able to pull off a kidnapping and ransom. There’s a reason they almost never happen anymore; there’s just too many ways for the kidnapper to get caught in the process of contacting the victim’s family and actually collecting the ransom. Today, kidnapping and ransom only really happens in places around the world where the police are in full cooperation with the gangs, like in cartel-held regions of Mexico.
The reason the situation seems odd to you is that you’re fixated on this being a kidnapping and ransom. This was a case of sex trafficking. It’s the only explanation that matches the fact pattern:
500 days in captivity.
No mention of any ransom or police manhunt.
A single individual apparently responsible for the whole thing.
The use of the word “predator” in the article.
The mention of her abuse over the months in captivity.
The most likely explanation is a man kidnapping a girl to keep her as a sex slave in his basement. If there were any ransom attempt, there would have been a huge manhunt, and it would have been a huge media circus. You don’t think we would have heard about a 16 year old (likely) white girl being kidnapped and ransomed? The media lives for that shit.
This was just derived from the article and common sense. But I went ahead and did some more searching. There are other articles out there with more information. For example, this one.
Adam Hunter Harmel faces a federal count of transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity following his arrest in eastern Oregon
Sounds like sex slavery to me.
The affidavit details severe physical and sexual abuse throughout the girl’s confinement. Harmel allegedly slept in the same basement bed as the teenager, keeping a knife beneath his pillow and forcing her to sleep against the wall to prevent her escape. Authorities said Harmel repeatedly assaulted and struck the girl, expressed a desire to start a family, and forced her to remove her orthodontic braces using pliers so she could not be identified.
Yeah. She was trafficked. A monster abducted her, held her in his basement, and tried to force her to be his “wife.” He’s literally being charged with both kidnapping and sexual abuse. Have a little more common sense.
I did read the article, but unlike you I have reading comprehension.
More recently, Harmel gave the victim a new phone without cellular data. However, the teenager was able to connect to Wi-Fi via the phone and used it to access the online game Among Us. The victim then seemingly used Among Us’ in-game chat function to contact another teenager in a lobby. The two exchanged social media details.
She contacted them in a lobby. It does not state that is where they met. They used the lobby chat to talk and exchange social media handles. She likely had to make new ones on this new phone to use. Nowhere does it state they did not know eachother before, but the fact that the teenager was able to contact her mother, as the article also states, implies to me that they had some sort of connection to her prior to the kidnapping. Perhaps I am wrong about that but nowhere does the article say otherwise.
You are very much crashing out right now btw. You don’t seem to even realize that @isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone is not me. And your reaction to me saying not to assume a kid in this situation would react logically is to get offended that I’m accusing you of “victim blaming”. When all I’m doing is pointing out that kids don’t always do things the way we might expect since they don’t have the life experience we do.
Yeah, my old phone has no sim but still has 911 capabilities. It even scrolls the message “No SIM card - emergency calls only” across the top of the phone. I think it might be the law here, all phones whether cell enabled or not have 911 access.
I was watching a movie the other day and it got me wondering… How do the movie sets prevent cell phones from actually dialing 911 when the actor needs to call them in the script.
No idea if this was used for any film, but you may make your own GSM “tower”. Though it needs to be powerful enough that the phone won’t decide to roam to something else, and that might be a regulatory issue.
With those resources you can get a custom SIM card for your custom tower (it’s actually not super expensive for basic ass devices with some dozen meters range) and then fake absolutely everything, and it won’t disrupt any real devices
Emergency calls ignore roaming settings and usually connect without checking subscription, no? Unless the SIM is so invalid the towers reject it explicitly. Or the phone is old and invalid, which is fucked up but a thing that’s possible.
Almost forgot that the US doesn’t have plain GSM anymore though, so there’s that.
Emergency calls will go to your own carrier first, but if you have no SIM your phone will attempt to connect to any available carrier arbitrarily which offers emergency services and that carrier will accept the emergency call
That’s why faking your own carrier with your own basestation and using a custom SIM to make your phone use it would prevent real emergency calls. (beware, doing it to others’ phones is very illegal)
For 911 calls, and most calls actually, they almost never show the screen of the phone being dialled anyway. They just show the actor tapping at the phone vaguely while the camera shows them from the side or the back with an intense expression, and then suddenly they hold it up to their ear and then they act like they’re talking to 911.
And if for some reason they really do have to show the screen, they will just use a non-functional phone with a fake app or graphical effects in post-production, the same way they make ghosts and dragons appear and spaceships come crashing out of the sky, etc. A phone screen is a trivial effort to fake.
I can’t remember which show I was watching last night (tried a few of them and gave up on all cause everything is seemingly terrible nowadays).
But I commented because that thought specifically camemto mind since I watched them dial 911 exactly on the screen and press the green dial button and see the screen switch to “calling 911” or whatever it does which is what triggered my question.
Maybe airplane mode, if not a fake app. Doing it in effects would be the same effort of recreation with way more extra work for worse results. If it matches an actual dialers modern design, rule of least effort would say airplane mode or similar. Else, fake dialer.
That’s why he already said he’s teaching his kids about avoiding the cops. ICE and other LEO’s abduct people all the time, quite often extrajudiciously.
Non cop kidnappers arguably might do it less but are inarguably less successful at it than LEO’s.
But ICE comes for you because you are on a list, not because you trustingly followed someone to their car or something. They hunt you; they don’t lure you. It doesn’t matter if you trust or distrust them; the result will be the same.
Fair point. That would not have been what I associate with “avoid”, though. That sounds more like “actively evade” / “run away”. If someone tells me to “avoid the cops” I think of it as “do not approach them”.
Well damn sure isn’t the police. I seen in a public restroom at my local convenience store had a crisis line to call if you were being trafficked. Wasn’t 911 or police. Downvote all yall want the truth in America cops are not here to help you or me. Never were.
Please, teach your kids how to email the cops.
So the cops can shoot them?
Don’t all phones can call 911 even without a sim card?
Yeah, most phones can call 112 or 911 without a SIM card, but apparently some networks still block them which is more than a little fucked up.
All phones can, and all networks in the US and EU at least are legally required to accept emergency calls from any phone, if it’s in their network or not, or if it has a simcard or not.
The SIM card only acts to identify you, it is not technically necessary to place any call
now that’s just not true, or at least can be made not true. There is no technical measure preventing someone from flashing a ROM that completely blocks 911 and other special numbers, or be like postmarketOS on quite a few phones and don’t support calls at all.
I wonder how it decides what network to use when the Sim is out.
Strongest network? Preferred network? Chooses the one that’s been the biggest bitch as a fuck you to them?
It probably uses the same logic as when you’re roaming out of your carrier’s area.
Roaming is usually a contractual thing. Like Sprint might always roam onto Telus in Canada.
These would be phones with nobody to have a contract with?
Seems like the kind of networks regulators should shut down
or at least fine a few million per day
Your profite picture is driving me mad. This is genus.
❤️
They may not have been in range of any towers. I’m not and i don’t live in rural Oregon.
I was thinking the same thing, how does she have access to Among Us and able to exchange social media contacts but not able to someway contact the police directly?
maybe that was too obvious to her captor and maybe a game flew under the psycho’s radar, giving just enough cover and time to ask for help
Yea, don’t think that’s it:
There’s something about this that doesn’t add up.
Honestly I think you just need to stop assuming a kid in this situation is going to react logically. I guarantee she just wanted to contact someone she knew and she had an old friend from school on among us and used that. Also, for the people suggesting email, it’s actually a lot harder to make an email these days than you’d think. Especially on the services that most people know about.
Exactly. How would she even log into Gmail?
First 2FA, now passwordless.
Disabling all the verification promots on known devices is next to impossible.
If she needed to create an account because she didnt know her password after 500 days being captive then it would be even worse. Sometimes its not even possible because they do a device scan and if your phone doesn’t meet their requirements you can’t make the account.
I’m not making any assumptions, though you are since you didn’t read the article (this was someone the met in Among Us), and you are assuming I’m victim blaming (could he some off-the-wall coercion). I know nothing of the situation, or the child, but 500 days as a 16/17 year old is not a normal kidnapping. I.E. something does not add up.
We’re obviously not talking about “kidnap and ransom” case here. We’re talking about someone being sex trafficked. They were not holding that girl for money.
No, we’re not, this is you assuming again. The article states a single abuser, and has kidnapping in the title, thus my description. Please just read the article.
I did read the article. I also have common sense. This clearly seems like a man abducted a girl to use as his sex slave. Kidnapping does not imply a ransom. No ransom was mentioned. And really, in 2026, one person is not going to be able to pull off a kidnapping and ransom. There’s a reason they almost never happen anymore; there’s just too many ways for the kidnapper to get caught in the process of contacting the victim’s family and actually collecting the ransom. Today, kidnapping and ransom only really happens in places around the world where the police are in full cooperation with the gangs, like in cartel-held regions of Mexico.
The reason the situation seems odd to you is that you’re fixated on this being a kidnapping and ransom. This was a case of sex trafficking. It’s the only explanation that matches the fact pattern:
The most likely explanation is a man kidnapping a girl to keep her as a sex slave in his basement. If there were any ransom attempt, there would have been a huge manhunt, and it would have been a huge media circus. You don’t think we would have heard about a 16 year old (likely) white girl being kidnapped and ransomed? The media lives for that shit.
This was just derived from the article and common sense. But I went ahead and did some more searching. There are other articles out there with more information. For example, this one.
Sounds like sex slavery to me.
Yeah. She was trafficked. A monster abducted her, held her in his basement, and tried to force her to be his “wife.” He’s literally being charged with both kidnapping and sexual abuse. Have a little more common sense.
I did read the article, but unlike you I have reading comprehension.
She contacted them in a lobby. It does not state that is where they met. They used the lobby chat to talk and exchange social media handles. She likely had to make new ones on this new phone to use. Nowhere does it state they did not know eachother before, but the fact that the teenager was able to contact her mother, as the article also states, implies to me that they had some sort of connection to her prior to the kidnapping. Perhaps I am wrong about that but nowhere does the article say otherwise.
You are very much crashing out right now btw. You don’t seem to even realize that @isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone is not me. And your reaction to me saying not to assume a kid in this situation would react logically is to get offended that I’m accusing you of “victim blaming”. When all I’m doing is pointing out that kids don’t always do things the way we might expect since they don’t have the life experience we do.
Take a breath.
Uhhh, maybe read the title and subtitle? Met is pretty defined.
oh i do see that in the subtitle now. My mistake there.
Yeah, my old phone has no sim but still has 911 capabilities. It even scrolls the message “No SIM card - emergency calls only” across the top of the phone. I think it might be the law here, all phones whether cell enabled or not have 911 access.
I was watching a movie the other day and it got me wondering… How do the movie sets prevent cell phones from actually dialing 911 when the actor needs to call them in the script.
No idea if this was used for any film, but you may make your own GSM “tower”. Though it needs to be powerful enough that the phone won’t decide to roam to something else, and that might be a regulatory issue.
Also could use a fake phone app. Or a fake phone…
With those resources you can get a custom SIM card for your custom tower (it’s actually not super expensive for basic ass devices with some dozen meters range) and then fake absolutely everything, and it won’t disrupt any real devices
Emergency calls ignore roaming settings and usually connect without checking subscription, no? Unless the SIM is so invalid the towers reject it explicitly. Or the phone is old and invalid, which is fucked up but a thing that’s possible.
Almost forgot that the US doesn’t have plain GSM anymore though, so there’s that.
Emergency calls will go to your own carrier first, but if you have no SIM your phone will attempt to connect to any available carrier arbitrarily which offers emergency services and that carrier will accept the emergency call
That’s why faking your own carrier with your own basestation and using a custom SIM to make your phone use it would prevent real emergency calls. (beware, doing it to others’ phones is very illegal)
“Fire at studio, 9000 dead cause emergency services couldn’t be called.”
Fake phone app that looks exactly the same. Or literally just a video. Or even just visual effects, with the phone being a green screen.
This, screens are hard to capture on film, even modern smartphones, so even if actors use “real apps” during filming it’s always edited in post
For 911 calls, and most calls actually, they almost never show the screen of the phone being dialled anyway. They just show the actor tapping at the phone vaguely while the camera shows them from the side or the back with an intense expression, and then suddenly they hold it up to their ear and then they act like they’re talking to 911.
And if for some reason they really do have to show the screen, they will just use a non-functional phone with a fake app or graphical effects in post-production, the same way they make ghosts and dragons appear and spaceships come crashing out of the sky, etc. A phone screen is a trivial effort to fake.
I can’t remember which show I was watching last night (tried a few of them and gave up on all cause everything is seemingly terrible nowadays).
But I commented because that thought specifically camemto mind since I watched them dial 911 exactly on the screen and press the green dial button and see the screen switch to “calling 911” or whatever it does which is what triggered my question.
Maybe airplane mode, if not a fake app. Doing it in effects would be the same effort of recreation with way more extra work for worse results. If it matches an actual dialers modern design, rule of least effort would say airplane mode or similar. Else, fake dialer.
Even in airplane mode most phones can dial 911 (switching the radio on)
Movie Magic
They could just not show them pushing the buttons. Just go “beep boop boop” “hello 911 what is your emergency”
Subject: Kidnapping!
Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you of a kidnapping that has me held on the premises of 123 Cavendon Road.
URGENT: Kidnapping!! ‼️
xXroblocks_masterXx@gmail.com has requested a read receipt.
https://youtu.be/1EBfxjSFAxQ
Please let me know if you have any additional questions that I may assist in clarifying for you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Best regards,
I’m old and I didn’t know you could email cops. lmfao
I’m teaching my kid that cops are dangerous and they should avoid them unless there is no other choice.
Welp. I feel like being locked in a basement is one of those “no other choice” situations.
Kidnappers adore you.
That’s why he already said he’s teaching his kids about avoiding the cops. ICE and other LEO’s abduct people all the time, quite often extrajudiciously.
Non cop kidnappers arguably might do it less but are inarguably less successful at it than LEO’s.
But ICE comes for you because you are on a list, not because you trustingly followed someone to their car or something. They hunt you; they don’t lure you. It doesn’t matter if you trust or distrust them; the result will be the same.
Who do you think makes the list? Fucking idiot.
Ok please elaborate, how avoiding the cops prevents you from ending up on a list of fucktards like ICE.
ICE is going around harassing random brown people. They’re not just going after people on lists.
Hell, hundreds of US citizens have ended up in ICE’s dungeons.
Fair point. That would not have been what I associate with “avoid”, though. That sounds more like “actively evade” / “run away”. If someone tells me to “avoid the cops” I think of it as “do not approach them”.
I mean, he had internet. He probably could have googled how to email them.
Did you even read the bloody article? It clearly says she.
Common sense too. This clearly wasn’t a ransom situation. Not many boys get abducted for in that kind of case. A few do, but it’s mostly girls.
Fuck the police, need other organization to contact. The police won’t help, more likely to help kidnappers or shoot the victim.
I am waiting for your clear suggestions who you would contact instead.
Your friend on Among Us obviously wtf are u even asking for
Well damn sure isn’t the police. I seen in a public restroom at my local convenience store had a crisis line to call if you were being trafficked. Wasn’t 911 or police. Downvote all yall want the truth in America cops are not here to help you or me. Never were.