Rudy Farias speaks out about the 8 years his mom said he was missing: 'I just wanted to be free'

• Rudy Farias has spoken for the first time since news broke of eight-year 'missing persons' case.
• Houston police say Farias was home with mom all along. On Wednesday, Farias called that home 'prison.'
• "I just wanted to be free," he said, calling himself a victim of "Stockholm syndrome."

Rudy Farias — the "missing" Houston man who cops say was home all along since running away for a single day eight years ago — has given his first interview since the bizarre case broke last week, telling reporters that his home was a "prison."

"It's as if I lived in a prison," he told the local Fox affiliate in Houston. "I just wanted to be free. I just wanted to live my life." 

Over the past eight years, his mother, Janie Santana, told him that were he to resurface, police would throw him in jail, Farias said, calling himself a victim of "Stockholm syndrome" at her hands.

"She would manipulate me into saying I would get arrested  for a speeding ticket," he said in the interview. "It just felt like brainwashing, honestly." 

He hid when family and friends came over, he told the network. 

"I was stuck at home," he said. "Somebody would come up, my mom would just tell me to stay in the room, keep the doors locked, don't let them in. Don't make any sounds." 

Farias' reappearance had been announced by two Texas-based missing persons organizations over the July 4 weekend.

"It's him!" read a Facebook post believed by family members to have been written by his mother. "It's our Rudy," the post read, claiming he had found across town from his home in northeastern Houston, slumped outside a church.

He was covered in old and new bruises and was too traumatized to speak, the post claimed.

The astounding reappearance story, reported in press throughout the country, soon unraveled. Houston police held a press conference saying that the then 18-year-old had actually returned home the day after his mother reported him missing back in 2015.

"Mother Janie continued to deceive police," said Lt. Christopher Zamora of the Houston Police Department.

A Houston-based activist, Quanell X, told reporters that the mom had kept him as a virtual slave and forced him to sleep with her. 

Farias denied to Fox 26 that he ever said his mom sexually abused him.

Four private investigators who worked the original missing-persons case told Insider there were red flags all along. The only leads concerning his whereabouts had been provided by Santana, the mother. None could be independently confirmed, and all were wild goose chases, they said.

Santana has not responded to repeated efforts to reach her by phone and email. She has not been charged in the disappearance.