was believed

Question

I'm wondering if "be believed" can be naturally followed by both past and present participles.

a. The boy was believed drowned.

b. The man was believed being kept in isolation.

c. The man was believed kept in isolation.

Answer 1

The boy was believed drowned.

This is acceptable English in formal reports, such as police reports or newspaper articles. It is generally unnatural/non-idiomatic outside these contexts. There are other words that are commonly found in these kinds of reports... "believed dead/shot/stabbed/drowned" or on the less lethal side, "believed missing/deserted/captured/lost". More rarely, but still acceptable, would be the happier "believed alive/found/rescued".

The man was believed being kept in isolation.

This is not acceptable grammar, as it mixes the tenses "was" and "being". You can't do that in English.

The man was believed kept in isolation.

This is an interesting case. It seems to fit the criteria of your first example, except this sentence is not idiomatic at all. I suspect the reason is that "kept in isolation" is not a single word, it's a noun phrase. Here, I think you would need to add the extra words that were omitted in the first example:

The man was believed to {be/have been} kept in isolation.

Of course, you always can put the words back into all the examples, and it will never sound strange to do so. It's more that in certain cases, you are allowed to omit these words.

The boy was believed to {be/have been} drowned.