She Had to Forgive Her Kidnapper. This Is Her Story

THE RESCUE

Cathy Mahone, Lauren Burns’s mother, met Ali Bayan, an international student from Jordan, in college at a restaurant where they both worked.  He pursued her and was very attentive and romantic.  The pair married eight months later and about four years later, Cathy became pregnant with a little girl.  The marriage was already troubled before Lauren arrived.  Ali wanted to move the family back to Jordan to live near his family and raise their child as a Muslim.  Cathy was resolute that she would never agree to that. They separated, and Cathy filed for divorce when Lauren was just six weeks old. 

One October day in 1987, when Lauren was seven-years-old, her father, Ali, who’d had her for the weekend along with his new wife, reminded Cathy that he’d take her to school that day.  Cathy decided to go have lunch with her daughter, arrived at the school, and asked for Lauren.  The teacher told her that she hadn’t come to school that day and that she assumed Lauren was with her.  Cathy immediately called Ali, who didn’t answer.  She went to his apartment; it was empty.  She went to the restaurant where he worked with his brother, who said he didn’t know where he was.  She called the airport and asked if they were on a flight and was finally told, because she frantically said that her daughter may have been kidnapped, that they were on a flight to Jordan.  He had stolen her.  

While Lauren was in the Middle East, her mother, Cathy, embarked on a desperate effort to bring her daughter home. Conventional legal avenues were exhausted, and every apparent door seemed to close. Yet Cathy refused to accept that Lauren was lost. Faith became central to her response. Rather than allowing impossible circumstances to determine the outcome, she continued praying and believing that God had not abandoned her daughter. The story therefore becomes, from the beginning, a story of a mother’s fierce love intertwined with faith. Eventually, an extraordinary opportunity emerged. A small group of former military operatives became involved and planned a covert international rescue mission. The mission was dangerous and highly improbable.  Basically, Cathy and the three men travelled to Jordan, spotted Lauren on a school bus, and one day, dressed in Arab garb, took her off the bus and rushed to the Allenby Bridge which connects Jordan and Israel.  Once out of the country, they would be free.  With hearts pounding, the men and Cathy showed their papers to the guards on the bridge and were waved through. Finally, they were free and Lauren was brought back to the United States shortly afterward.  
 
REDEMPTION 

One of the most important themes of Stolen is the distinction between rescue and healing. Lauren was physically rescued, but the emotional consequences of what had happened did not disappear. Returning to the United States did not instantly restore the sense of safety she had lost. Lauren and her mother had to live in hiding, change their names, and rebuild their lives while carrying the continuing weight of fear and betrayal. This becomes a crucial message of the memoir: sometimes the world sees the miracle but does not see the aftermath. People could celebrate Lauren’s rescue, but Lauren still had to live with memories and questions. What had happened to her? Why had it happened? Could she trust people again? What did her father’s actions mean about her own identity? Could she ever feel completely safe? These questions demonstrate why Lauren does not want Stolen to be remembered simply as a kidnapping story. The kidnapping is the beginning of the story, not its conclusion.             

As Lauren grows older, another battle emerges—the struggle to reclaim identity, to understand who she is apart from what happened to her. Trauma can impose an identity on a person: victim, abandoned child, frightened survivor, damaged person. Lauren’s journey involves learning that her worst experience does not have to become her permanent identity. The book therefore moves beyond the question, “What happened to me?” toward the deeper question, “Who am I now?” That transition is central to the memoir’s redemptive message. Lauren’s childhood was profoundly disrupted, but her future did not have to remain defined by the disruption.

The author describes the process as opening a “box” of memories, hurt, and healing. Rather than burying the past indefinitely, she eventually begins confronting it. That confrontation is painful, but it becomes necessary for genuine freedom.  Cathy did allow Lauren to talk with her dad on the phone and even see him again when she was 13 and once more in high school, with much supervision.  

A particularly significant aspect of Lauren’s story is what she describes as the “father wound.”  Her experience forced her to wrestle with the reality that the person who should have provided protection instead became associated with fear and betrayal. This complicated her understanding of fatherhood and, eventually, her understanding of God as Father. In an episode of her Redeemed Podcast devoted to the story behind Stolen, Lauren discusses the connection between her childhood experience, fatherlessness, broken relationships, and the way sin distorts our understanding of God. She points listeners toward Genesis 1–3, Romans 5, and John 14 as part of that theological reflection. This is an important dimension of the book for Christian readers. Lauren is not merely saying that God rescued her from a terrible circumstance. Her testimony is that God eventually met her in the emotional and spiritual consequences of that circumstance.

As Lauren grows into adulthood, her story becomes less about surviving what happened and more about understanding how to heal from it. This is where Stolen moves from true crime memoir into testimony.

Lauren emphasizes that healing is not necessarily instantaneous. A miraculous rescue can happen in a moment; emotional restoration may take years. Forgiveness can also be a process rather than a single decision.

The book explores the painful journey of learning to release the control that fear and betrayal can have over a person. Lauren does not portray forgiveness as pretending that what happened was acceptable. Instead, forgiveness becomes part of her movement toward freedom. The underlying Christian message is that forgiveness is not primarily about declaring the past harmless. It is about refusing to allow the past to dictate the future.

Faith is woven throughout Lauren’s story, particularly through her mother’s refusal to surrender hope.

The story repeatedly raises the question of what a person does when circumstances appear completely hopeless.

Lauren’s mother could have concluded that every door had closed. Instead, she continued praying. The eventual rescue is presented as an extraordinary answer to that perseverance. But Lauren’s understanding of faith goes further than believing God for a rescue. Her mature faith involves trusting God with the parts of the story that cannot be changed. That distinction is important. The miracle was not simply that Lauren came home. The deeper miracle was that a life profoundly marked by trauma could eventually become a life marked by purpose, faith, and hope.

One of the strongest ideas in Stolen is that redemption does not mean pretending the past never happened.

Lauren cannot erase her childhood experience. She cannot change the fact that she was kidnapped. She cannot rewrite the betrayal she experienced. Instead, redemption means that those events no longer have the final word. The author’s own website summarizes the message of the book as a journey from kidnapping and rescue toward “healing, faith over fear, and finding freedom through forgiveness.” That concept gives the title Stolen an additional meaning. Lauren’s childhood was literally stolen from her in a horrifying way. But the story asks whether the rest of her life also has to be stolen by what happened. Her answer is no. The trauma may be part of her story, but it does not have to be the conclusion of her story.  Today, Lauren does not have a relationship with her father by choice.  Though she has forgiven him, expressed that, and shared the Gospel with him, he does not believe what he did was wrong and sees life very differently. The last conversation they had was in 2019.  

The book's larger purpose is to encourage people whose stories may look very different from Lauren's but who nevertheless carry their own wounds—fear, loss, abandonment, betrayal, shame, or disappointment.

Her message is essentially: what happened to you matters, but it does not have to determine who you become.

To learn more about Lauren Burns, click the LINK! 

CREDITS

Author, Stolen (Post Hill Press, 2026) / physical therapist / podcast host, Redeemed / married with two sons