--- title: 12-Year-Old Fakes Own Kidnapping to Avoid Dentist description: When police found a 12-year-old boy in a French alpine village in May, he insisted he'd been kidnapped. canonical: https://time.com/2912211/12-year-old-fakes-own-kidnapping-to-avoid-dentist/ author: Jack Linshi article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-23T16:16:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:11:04.007Z og:title: 12-Year-Old Fakes Own Kidnapping to Avoid Dentist og:description: Odontophobia reaches a new level og:url: https://time.com/2912211/12-year-old-fakes-own-kidnapping-to-avoid-dentist/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7f99bd48a411b72/698698cc169ab020b927a067/boy-kidnapping-avoid-dentist.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: Boy Fakes Kidnapping to Avoid Dentist og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 12-Year-Old Fakes Own Kidnapping to Avoid Dentist twitter:description: Odontophobia reaches a new level twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7f99bd48a411b72/698698cc169ab020b927a067/boy-kidnapping-avoid-dentist.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 12-Year-Old Fakes Own Kidnapping to Avoid Dentist > Sponsored content. 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Bill Peters—Denver Post via Getty Images  by [Jack Linshi](https://time.com/author/jack-linshi/)  ## Jack Linshi Jun 23, 2014 4:16 PM UTC When police found a 12-year-old boy in a French alpine village in May, he insisted he’d been kidnapped—only, he hadn’t. For someone who wasn’t actually kidnapped, the boy described his abductor with imaginative detail: a 1.70 m. muscular European man in his mid 30s, clad in a black shirt and light jeans with a vertical scar on his right cheek had whisked him away, reports [_The Local._](http://www.thelocal.fr/20140620/boy-pretends-to-be-kidnapped-to-avoid-dentist)By chance, he managed to escape after his abductor had taken him to a town nearly 100 miles from his home. For a month, police searched for the alleged kidnapper, but came up short. Their skepticism grew when they reviewed security footage from the boy’s hometown. Finally, they re-questioned him. This time, he admitted something different: just kidding. In reality, he was too petrified to go to the dentist, so he staged his own kidnapping to get out of the appointment. 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