- Rudy Farias is speaking out about what cops say was his bogus, eight-year 'missing persons' case.
- Houston police say Farias was home with mom all along. On Wednesday, Farias called that home 'prison.'
Rudy Farias — the "missing" Houston man who cops say was home all along since running away for a single day eight years ago — has given his first TV interview since the bizarre case broke last week, telling reporters that his home was a "prison."
"It's as if I lived in a prison," the 26-year-old told the local Fox affiliate in Houston. "I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to live my life."
In the half-hour interview, Farias took a sometimes tearful swipe at his mother, Janie Santana, in whose house, he said, he remained a hidden captive.
Santana kept hold of him for years, he said, not by physical force or locked doors, but through the sheer strength of her threats and "negativity."
"I don't want any contact with her at all," he said, sobbing. "I just want to live my life away from her."
Farias' face was obscured in the video at his request.
Santana was at the family home in northeast Texas as recently as this week, the New York Post reported. Farias, meanwhile, said he is living apart from her, with family members from his mother's side.
Farias said he was held against his will, "mentally, not physically."
"Just constantly, like, she was bombarding me with negative thoughts," he said.
When he did leave the house, Farias said he was forced to work "12-hour shifts, seven days a week," he said, noting he was only paid $60.
Farias also wanted to be clear: he did not have sex with his mother.
Last week, a Houston-based activist, Quanell X, told reporters after speaking with Farias that the mom had kept him as a virtual slave, at times forcing him to kiss her on the lips and sleep with her while she was naked.
Santana did try to blur boundaries, Farias said.
"You know, just boundaries, she would push, or making me uncomfortable," he said, noting that he would ask her to stop, but she would repeatedly ask him why.
"'What did I do? I didn't do anything wrong!'" he said Santana would protest.
"And I would just be like a people pleaser. But I didn't have people to please, just my mom," he added. "It was just her, her, her, all the time. My mom."
Farias said Santana warned him that if were he to resurface, police would throw him in jail, Farias said, calling himself a victim of "Stockholm syndrome."
"She would manipulate me into saying I would get arrested for a speeding ticket," he said in the interview. "It just felt like brainwashing, honestly."
One time, he did get pulled over while driving his mother in her car, he said.
"She told me say something else. Say a different name, because 'they're going to arrest you,'" he said.
Houston Police Lt. Christopher Zamora last week had told reporters that Farias and Santana had "previous HPD interactions" where false names and dates of birth were given to patrol officers.
Farias hid when family and friends came over, he told the network.
"I was stuck at home," he said. "Somebody would come up, my mom would just tell me to stay in the room, keep the doors locked, don't let them in. Don't make any sounds."
Farias' reappearance had been announced by two Texas-based missing persons organizations over the July 4 weekend.
"It's him!" read a Facebook post believed by family members to have been written by his mother. "It's our Rudy," the post read, claiming he had found across town from his home in northeastern Houston, slumped outside a church.
He was covered in old and new bruises and was too traumatized to speak, the post claimed.
The astounding reappearance story, reported in press around the world, soon unraveled. Houston police held a press conference saying the then 18-year-old had actually returned home the day after his mother reported him missing back in 2015.
"Mother Janie continued to deceive police," said Lt. Christopher Zamora of the Houston Police Department.
Four private investigators who worked the original missing-persons case told Insider there were red flags all along. The only leads concerning his whereabouts had been provided by Santana, the mother. None could be independently confirmed, and all were wild goose chases, they said.
Santana has not responded to repeated efforts to reach her by phone and email. She has not been charged in the disappearance.