>>It’s good to hear that this turned out well.<<
As well as possible.. that kid is going to be traumatized, maybe for life (I hope not — little kids are pretty resilient).
This week is the kid’s birthday from what I heard this morning.
No question that this will have been a traumatic experience for the kid. But I would be hopeful that, as long as he has a decent and loving family to go back to, he will get over it.
He’ll remember it all his life. But as long as there is no connection to the people he lives with in everyday life—his family, his teachers, and so forth—he should find strength and reassurance there.
In other words, this experience would gradually be seen as something separate and different from his normal life, so hopefully the damage to his confidence will gradually fade away.
Church would help, too. Some sense that there is good and evil in the world, but that evil will not prevail, unless you give in to it and let it.