Teen kidnapping victim relives horror of being chained up in a hotel room for months by a teacher’s aide amid fears abuser could be released

A Wisconsin woman who was kidnapped as a child by a teacher’s aide has broken her silence about the horrific abuse she suffered before being miraculously rescued.

Jessyca Mullenberg was just 13 years old when she was kidnapped by her 38-year-old neighbor Steven Oliver on September 16, 1995.

Oliver had stalked her for six years before the fateful day when he tricked her into going on a trip under the guise of meeting a publisher about a short story she had written.

Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Mullenberg recalled the chilling moment she woke up in his car to find her hands and legs tied with rope.

She then spent three months chained up in a hotel room before an episode of America’s Most Wanted ultimately led to a break in the case and the arrest of her kidnapper.

But Mullenberg, now 42, married with two children of his own, fears he could soon be released from prison. “I’m terrified for both of my children,” she said.

Oliver had developed a morbid obsession with Mullenberg when she was only eight and he was a teacher at her school.

He fell so in love with her that he eventually bought a house across the street from where her father Dale Bourget lived in Eau Claire. Her parents were divorced at the time.

During this time, he also founded a creative writing club and appointed himself a mentor figure to Jessyca.

On the day she was kidnapped, she was visiting her father in Eau Claire and recalled visiting Oliver’s home with her two brothers, step-siblings and other students to participate in a writing club.

There she was told that her short story had been selected by a publisher and that he would take her to the nearby city of Madison for a meeting.

‘We all thought it was real. There was paperwork we had to fill out. There were checks we got,” she recalls.

But shortly after getting into his car, she realized there was no book contest: she was kidnapped.

‘At one point I fell asleep. I woke up all tied up in ropes. “He told me I’m not going home and I have to listen to what he says,” she said.

“He said my name will be Cindy Johnson and his name will be Dave. You’re going to call me daddy and we’re going to move to start our new lives over,” she continued.

At one point, while driving over a bridge, Mullunberg said she tried to jump out of the car but was quickly caught — and knew at that moment she was trapped.

After a nine-hour drive, Mullenberg arrived in Kansas City, Missouri.

They then went to the airport where Oliver held a pocket knife to her back and forced her to board a plane to Texas.

Over the next three and a half months, Mullenberg was moved to three different places while Oliver hid from the police.

She remembered how he cut her hair and dyed it dark brown in the first hotel and warned her not to leave the room.

‘He told me I’m fat, stupid, stupid and ugly. He told me that no one wants me and that my parents don’t love me,” she said through tears.

By the time they got to the third hotel, a Days Inn in Houston, he had run out of money and convinced the manager to let him become a painter,” she recalled.

The couple stayed in a room at the back of the hotel room which she said was infested with cockroaches and there were no people around.

‘I would be tied to the bed. “I would be punished if I didn’t listen and said I was a bad girl,” she said.

‘I wasn’t allowed to use the phone. I wasn’t allowed to go to the toilet and I wasn’t allowed to eat unless he said I could.’

When she was alone in the room, she desperately thought of ways to escape, but never knew when he would emerge again. “He was always checking on me,” she said, describing how her feelings fluctuated from hope to hopelessness every day.

Once he caught her using the phone in the room and hit her. He would also hit her if she got the answers wrong in the workbook he gave her, she added.

“I had to earn my TV privileges by performing various sexual acts,” Mullenberg continued.

On the rare occasions she was allowed to leave the hotel, Oliver forbade her to speak and insisted she pretend he was her father.

Most of the people they contacted had no idea she was the missing Wisconsin girl whose face made national news and appeared on some 15,000 flyers across the country.

Only the motel manager was suspicious. And one day, on December 28, 1995, the woman saw an episode of America’s Most Wanted at a friend’s house and recognized Oliver’s face.

She immediately called the FBI, who quickly descended on the hotel.

“The FBI came to our room and put us both in the same police car,” she said. ‘They kept asking my name. They said your name is Jessyca. I said that’s not my name. I said my name is Cindy Johnson.”

She later realized she had been ‘brainwashed’ and was reunited with her family.

‘I ran to my mother. We hugged each other at the airport. There were cameras everywhere,” she remembers.

She said she remembers feeling confused, overwhelmed and scared, but grateful the nightmare was finally over.

To help her remember who she was, her family showed her photos.

“After three and a half months of hearing your name is Cindy Johnson every day, it took a while to get out of that mindset and say, ‘No, you’re Jessica Mullenberg,'” she explained.

Following his arrest, Oliver was sentenced to 40 years in prison for kidnapping and interstate transportation of a minor for illegal sexual purposes. He is being held at FMC Devens, a federal prison in Massachusetts.

Today, Mullenberg goes by her married name Christianson and continues to share her survival story to help others, speaking at schools and events to alert people to the warning signs of abuse.

In 2018, she received an award from the National Association of Missing and Exploited Children, where she was photographed with actor Ben Affleck.

She also graduated with a degree in psychology, criminal justice and law enforcement.

However, her trauma still haunts her to this day and as she battles PTSD she admits she fears the day her captor is released.

Oliver is currently scheduled to be released from prison on January 26, 2031, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons told DailyMail.com.

“I’m terrified for both of my children,” she said, explaining that she constantly reminds them never to leave the school grounds with anyone other than family.

“I don’t think it’s possible to live a normal life,” she added.