A homeless single dad has revealed people suspect he kidnapped his own son due to his appearance.
Rob, 49, his son Damian, 18, and their dog Lucifer have travelled all over the US but they now split their time between Slab City, California, where a homeless community are based, and a small island new Rainer, in Oregon.
They survive by fishing crayfish and selling cans collected in city bins.
The single dad revealed he has been arrested numerous times and has been under suspicion for kidnapping his own son due to his appearance.
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The pair discuss their unusual living arrangements in a Channel 5 documentary airing tonight.
Rob, who also goes by ‘Pirate Rob', reflected on how he tried to live in mainstream society in which it is ‘frowned upon’ to be a single dad.
"I tried to stay, try to get the apartment, have the job. Being a single dad is almost frowned upon out there, like no one can believe a dad's actually raising his kids,” he tells Ben Fogle.
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“I had the cops thinking that I had kidnapped him more than I can count,” he shared, revealing this is one of the reasons why he decided to move into the wilderness.
“A lot of the cop callers, they just see a crazy-looking dad, there's no way he's taking care of his kid right.
“I've always wanted to be a dad, I always wanted to be not my dad. My dad was pretty overbearing, always disapproving of things; my first child, I realised I was being my dad."
Slab City is where Rob is the head of the Pirate Camp, a settlement created eight years ago which has murderers, drug addicts and various criminals as its residents.
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The other six months of the year he spends on the island in Oregon in a makeshift camp site. He was born in 1973 a few miles from the island where he now partly lives.
As a child Rob was shy and experienced bullying as he struggled to fit in. He held several jobs, such as a factory worker and fur trader positions and got married.
However the marriage fell apart and Rob struggled to hold on to a job and ended up on the streets. He has sole custody of his son Damien after the boy’s mum ‘quit coming home’. He goes to school on the mainland during the day.
At night time the father-son duo share cooking duties and often whip up mac n’ cheese on an open fire.
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Rob said he and his son are safer living outside the fringes of society. “'He's safer out here. So many people try to tear him away from me when I'm out there,” he declared.
“And it's so overwhelming so I'd much rather having him come out there in the wild. I raised him out here.
“I had to do all these things, it felt much more comfortable out here. In reality me and him can get closer out here, because we don't have people trying to tear us apart."
When asked by Ben who he meant, Rob replied: “Everyone, the old lady driver down the road seeing my son and me, being like ‘must be up to no good or something’. Or the Child Protective Services (CPS), the police.
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“We've had police take us to the police to the station and put us in different rooms. and he's just a little kid.”
He added: “Out here we have a good time, in fact we forget that it's what's going on out there," he said of the island.
Topics: Film and TV