The Rescuer Who Became Part of the World He Once Opposed.
In Les Misérables, Marius represents youthful idealism, romance, conviction, and the longing to build a meaningful life within the midst of revolution and upheaval.
In Scotland’s Les Misérables, Marius is represented through Colin — Victoria’s former husband — the young man who initially appeared as a rescuer, companion, protector, and fellow believer standing against the forces that had consumed much of her life.
Victoria married Colin when she was sixteen years old and he was twenty, shortly after she escaped being re-trafficked into Epstein’s child trafficking web when she was rescued in Grindelwald, Switzerland in July of 1996.
To Victoria, Colin first appeared as a heroic figure who entered the darkness surrounding her life at a moment when escape still seemed almost impossible.
He was personally involved in her rescue from child trafficking in cooperation with an extraction mission in which members of government offices were also involved. He showed up at the Thenardiers’ house in Liberty, Missouri, in 1996, appearing to represent a Christian missions organization, and picked her up to take her to the airport to fly her to Grindelwald, Switzerland, to go on the mission trip to the Euroventure Summer Camp that saved her life.
Through their teenage marriage, he became her Legal Shield.
The marriage became an important legal barrier against efforts to return her to the environment she had escaped.
The Thenardiers vehemently protested the allegations that they were participants in child trafficking and were actively using legal mechanisms to demand her to be returned to them. Victoria’s marriage to Colin shocked them and stopped them from forcing her to return to them.
To Victoria, the marriage initially became a sanctuary of protection, youthful hope, shared faith, and the possibility of finally building a life with the boy she had known and loved since childhood.
Like Marius in Les Misérables, Colin originally appeared aligned with justice, faith, idealism, and moral purpose.
An Irish-born citizen of the UK, he initially shared Victoria’s Christian faith and had a passion for international missions, justice, and Scottish independence. When he rescued Victoria, he appeared determined to become an abolitionist of human trafficking and modern day slavery.
He Once Appeared To Be Building His Life Around Christian Missions
When Victoria and Colin married, Colin appeared genuinely excited about Christian missions and youth ministry. He wanted to become a missionary and was drawn to international ministry opportunities across Europe, including Christian youth camps where young people gathered for worship, teaching, outreach, and missions training.
He loved leading worship.
He regularly gathered with friends to play guitar and sing worship songs, and Christian ministry appeared to be something he wanted at the center of his life rather than merely something he participated in occasionally.
He was especially enthusiastic about youth camps and international missions, including the European camp environment that became connected to Victoria’s own rescue.
For a period of time, he also hosted a Christian radio program that went on the air.
To Victoria, all of this seemed to confirm that the young man she had married was moving toward a life of faith, missions, worship, and service.
That is what made what followed so difficult for her to understand.
Within Scotland’s Les Misérables, Marius becomes a tragic figure because the revolutionary idealism that once defined him gradually appeared to fracture beneath temptation, compromise, substance abuse, ego, spiritual drift, and the seductive pull of the very world he once opposed.
Colin changed career paths to Become an Actor.
He changed career paths from Christian missions to become an actor. He told Victoria that he wanted to be a person who took a stand for purity and Christian values in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, he diverted from that path after his agent talked him out of it. His agent told him if he went that direction, his career would never amount to anything. He told him no one would hire him, and he would never get the big movie roles.
The agent helped him build an image that he said was “marketable” to casting directors. The agent advised Colin not to be seen publicly with his wife.
Instead, the agent arranged for escorts to accompany him to dinners and events—sometimes more than one escort. He helped reshape Colin’s public image into that of a ladies’ man. He told him that would get him the roles he wanted in the film industry. He said that’s the image that directors want to see.
Colin told Victoria this was just an act, and that it was all fake. But he was going on public dates with paid escorts, and refused to divert from his agent’s public image strategy. To Victoria, he increasingly appeared to feel entitled to the attention he was receiving from other women
He appeared to become spiritually and morally divided by the surrounding celebrity culture involving open sexuality, escorts, infidelity, emotional instability, and alcohol abuse. To Victoria, he looked like a serial adulterer.
Victoria came to believe that he had developed serious problems involving alcohol and drugs, which increasingly became a serious concern within the marriage.
He told Victoria that also was just an act. He said that was fake too.
For what Victoria experienced, it appeared that Colin had defected into the world of strippers and escorts and betrayed everything he once claimed to stand for.
The man who once helped rescue her increasingly appeared to became entangled with environments that mirrored aspects of the same exploitative world she had escaped.
To Victoria, one of the most painful aspects of this transformation was that Colin never fully seemed to understand the destruction his choices caused, why this destroyed his marriage.
With the encouragement of his father, he repeatedly sought reconciliation and second chances, yet each return to the relationship, in Victoria’s account, coincided with renewed instability, incidents she describes as domestic violence, and an escalating sense of mortal danger. Victoria asked Colin, “How does this keep happening if everything you are telling me is fake is really fake?”
Within Scotland’s Les Misérables, Marius, represented by Colin, is more than lost romance alone.
He represents the tragedy of compromised idealism — the painful collapse of a person who once genuinely stood for justice, courage, faith, and rescue, yet gradually appeared to become spiritually fractured by the very forces he once opposed.
Unlike the openly monstrous figures within Scotland’s Les Misérables, Colin is tragic precisely because he was not originally an enemy.
He was, at one time, part of Victoria’s rescue.
That is what makes his fall so devastating.
He was once genuinely brave, genuinely loving, genuinely idealistic, and genuinely part of the rescue.
To Victoria, Colin ultimately symbolizes the heartbreaking reality that not every revolutionary spirit survives the battle unchanged. Some become exhausted. Some become divided. Some lose themselves within the systems they once resisted.
And some become tragic reminders that rescue alone is not always enough to fully escape the gravitational pull of darkness, power, addiction, and spiritual compromise.
Systems of darkness do not merely hurt people physically —they reshape people psychologically, spiritually, morally, emotionally, relationally, and socially across decades. And Colin is the heartbreaking proof that: even rescuers are not immune to that gravitational pull.
Ironically, the theme of the 1996 camp in Grindelwald, Switzerland — the year Victoria was rescued — was “Run to the Darkness — A Lost World Needs You.” Colin did run to the darkness. Unfortunately, he appeared to become part of it.
Rescuer → Sanctuary → Idealist → Fracture → Betrayal → Tragedy → Villain.
