The 25-year-old man in Texas who was found alive eight years after he was reported missing had been sexually abused and drugged by his mother for years, according to a community activist who spoke with him on Wednesday.
Rudy Farias was found outside a Houston church last week after his mother reported missing him in 2015. Farias was 17 when his mom said he never returned home from a walk with his dogs.
Investigators with the Houston Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit spoke with Farias and his mother Wednesday, though details from that conversation have not been released.
Despite all these accusations by Farias, Quanell X said he repeatedly told him he didn’t want his mother to get in trouble.
“He kept saying; I don’t want her to go to prison, I don’t want her to,” Quanell X said.
Farias was reported missing in March 2015. At the time, he was 17 years old, and authorities said he went missing while walking his two dogs in northeast Houston. The two dogs were later found, but Rudy was gone.
Quanell said Farias told him he ran away in 2015 but returned two days later. Farias reportedly told Quanell that his mother threatened him, saying he would get into trouble with the police if he said anything.
Farias claims he wasn’t allowed to leave home for the last eight years, according to Quanell. When asked why he wouldn’t leave, Quanell explained that Farias told him his mother would give him drugs and said he was afraid to go to the police.
“She convinced him that he was in trouble for initially running away and that law enforcement wanted to arrest him and put him in jail for running away,” Quanell said. “She had convinced him that all types of agencies were looking for him to put him in jail.”
“The things he told me, I broke down in tears,” Quanell X said. “She was giving him drugs. She was punishing him by locking him in a room over and over. She convinced him that law enforcement wanted to put him in jail, that law enforcement was looking for him because he ran away and that because he ran away, he was going to go to prison.”
Family members of Farias were at the hotel where Quanell spoke to the media and said they were shocked and hurt about what they’d heard.
“He said he had lost a brother in a motorcycle accident,” Ross said. “I know when he was thinking about his brother, he wouldn’t come to hang out; he would go and sit there in the back in the woods by himself.”‘
On Tuesday, ABC13 spoke with Farias’ mother outside her home.
She did not want to go on camera but claimed the man her neighbours have spent time with and was seen living with her is her nephew.
She shared a picture of him, but neighbours refuted that claim, saying the person in the photo was not him. Now, they’re trying to understand why either would say Farias was ever missing.
Houston police are expected to share details about this case on Thursday. The department said they are aware of the allegations being put out but “are not in a position at this time to discuss specifics of the interviews or if the content being released is entirely factual.”
