Missing Teen May Have Asked Reddit for Help

The person who posted wanted to keep father out of trouble
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 6, 2015 3:00 AM CST
'Missing Teen' Asked Reddit for Help
This undated photo provided by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office shows Bobby Hernandez.   (Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office via AP)

What do you do when you find out you were kidnapped as a child and your life has been a lie? That question was posed to Reddit users—more than a month before the case of Julian Hernandez surfaced—by a poster who appears to have been the 18-year-old himself, reports USA Today. In the now-deleted post, a user with the name Throwaway0805049 says he has just discovered the truth and wonders what to do about the fake name and Social Security number he has been trying to apply to colleges with. "I'm not angry at my father in the slightest," the user writes, per USA Today. "I remember that he used to ask me, 'If I ever committed a terrible crime, would you still love me?' I still do, even after learning everything."

The poster says his father raised him well and he doesn't want him to get in trouble for taking him away from his mother when he was a young child. "I know my father has dug himself a deep hole," he says, per WVTM. "I want to know how I can resolve these problems." In a post made on Thursday, Throwaway0805049 says he is indeed Hernandez and that his earlier posts were made amid "confusion, anger, rumors, lies." The father, Bobby Hernandez, was arrested this week and could face up to 10 years in prison for the 2002 abduction, reports USA Today. A police spokesman in Vestavia Hills, Ala., where Julian lived before his father allegedly kidnapped him at age 5 and took him to Cleveland, tells WVTM that the mother is "overjoyed" he has been found and is safe. (A reporter covering the disappearance of two young brothers found them hiding under a bush.)

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