Patricia Hearst was kidnapped 30 years ago, on February 4, 1974.

She was a typical young rich girl, the 19 year old granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. She had been nothing out of the ordinary.

Then a murderous revolutionary group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), kidnapped her. A couple of months later, on April 15, 1974, Patty Hearst was captured on surveillance video toting a gun, an apparently fully willing participant in an SLA bank robbery.

She was transformed from nice, average Patty Hearst to the bisexual, revolutionary Tania, toting a gun, robbing a bank and issuing denunciations of capitalist swine.

She was eventually captured a year later, convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison. President Carter commuted her sentence after less than two years, and President Clinton pardoned her.

She has since lived a quiet rich woman's life, and acted in a couple of John Waters movies, notably as the mother of a similarly kidnapped rich girl in Cecil B Demented- John Waters best film.

Her story made a really interesting dent in the culture as the fulcrum for public debates and consideration of all kinds of issues concerning brainwashing, individual responsibility and personal identity.

She was obviously "brainwashed," whatever that means exactly. She would have never been involved in robbing banks if she hadn't been taken away at gunpoint and locked in a closet for weeks in fear for her life. Yet there she was in that bank, playing cops and robbers.

Was that really HER doing that? Should she have been held responsible for these actions? Was she under duress? What constitutes "duress," exactly?

How were her experiences similar or different from people drafted into the army and turned into killers, or from a young Salvador Agron being recruited to become a Vampire?

Who are "you" and who would "you" be after such an experience?

Discuss amongst yourselves.