JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
Page 2 of 4 • 
1, 2, 3, 4 
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:54 am
Experts: Kidnap victim faces difficult recovery
She should have been in high school and going on first dates, maybe leaving home for college, finding her first apartment, falling in love - growing up.
But Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, spent her formative years in captivity. Kidnapped at age 11 in South Lake Tahoe, she gave birth to two daughters when she was just a teenager, and likely lived with the near-constant threat of fear and abuse for 18 years.
She was found Wednesday in Antioch, and Thursday saw her mother for the first time since June 1991. But her recovery has barely started, say experts in child psychiatry and post-traumatic stress.
How well she progresses, along with her two children, depends on the quality of professional help she receives, and the strength of her support network.
"Someone asked me if I think she'll ever have a normal life. I'm not sure 'normal' is the word," said Paula Fass, a history professor at UC Berkeley and author of the book "Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America." "But let's hope she can still live decently and reconnect with that earlier life. The challenge will be to try to integrate these two parts of her life - before she was taken, and her children now - in a way that can be meaningful."
Few cases like it
A case like Dugard's is virtually unheard of. There are examples of children being taken and held captive for months or even years, but none as long as Dugard, and none who were taken as children and returned as adults.
The fact that Dugard now has two children - both the offspring of her accused captor, Phillip Garrido, according to police - further complicates her case. Several child psychologists and kidnapping experts compared Dugard's captivity to the case of an Austrian woman who was found last year after being imprisoned by her own father for 24 years and giving birth to seven of his children.
Dugard "was kept for 18 years, and through an important period in child development, when kids are busy becoming their own persons. It's a difficult period of time to miss out on," said Dr. Stuart Lustig, a UCSF child psychiatrist.
Dugard almost definitely suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a condition in which captives become sympathetic to their captors. Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, told media outlets that she has expressed guilt for bonding with Garrido.
It's common for kidnapped children to feel some compassion for their kidnappers, who abuse them but also become their only caretaker, child psychiatrists said. That creates a cognitive dissonance that isn't easily resolved, especially for children who don't have the life experience to understand what's happened to them.
"Children in this situation need to protect themselves, and the person who is the perpetrator is the one providing the comfort. Identifying with the aggressor feels like protecting yourself," said Dr. Victor Carrion, an expert in post-traumatic stress in children at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "This is not a conscious decision. It's something that happens in survival mode."
Probable PTSD
It's also likely that Dugard is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder - starting with the initial trauma of being kidnapped and kept up over years of abuse and confinement, Carrion said.
According to police, Dugard has lived in an encampment of tents and sheds in Garrido's backyard for most of the last two decades, with little interaction with people other than her captors and her children.
Her daughters, too, were isolated from the outside world - they never attended school or visited a doctor, police said. Just as Dugard must find a way to reintegrate with her family and society, so must her children, child psychiatrists said.
The children, ages 11 and 15, will need to be evaluated - psychiatrists will look at their developmental progress, such as their ability to learn, their language skills, and how they relate to others. The children may also complicate Dugard's recovery because they'll serve as a constant reminder of her captivity, child psychiatrists said. It may be difficult for Dugard to separate her love for her daughters from her complicated feelings toward Garrido.
But it's also possible, Fass said, that having raised two children may help Dugard in her recovery. The children could give her focus in the years ahead, and they may have offered her some small strength while she was held captive, by allowing her to care for someone else.
"Let's assume that the children were her company, and allowed her to exercise her caretaking ability," Fass said. "I would think those are two strengths that could be played on in her recovery. She wasn't entirely isolated, she wasn't just by herself. She was taking care of the children."
The key to reuniting Dugard with her family, experts say, will be to take it slowly. Her mother and stepfather can't expect her to be the 11-year-old girl who was taken 18 years ago, and at the same time Dugard can't expect her family to be the same.
When families are reunited, it's common for everyone to feel some guilt, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The children feel guilty for not being able to escape or for bonding with their kidnappers, and the parents feel guilty for losing them in the first place.
Allen said it will be critical for Dugard and her family to be patient with one another, and especially with Dugard's daughters.
Must start over
"Parent and child typically want to return things to the way they were, and what we've found is that - particularly with these kinds of spans - families have to start all over getting to know each other," Allen said. "The single most important thing for a parent, even when your child is 29 years old, is to love your child unconditionally."
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped seven years ago at age 14 and returned to her family nine months later, said in an interview on CNN on Friday that spending quiet time with her family was critical to her recovery. She believes it's possible to be happy and free again and to not let "this horrible event take over and consume the rest of your life."
Allen said recovery will be difficult, but he's hopeful for Dugard and her family.
"Despite the 18 years that have been lost, despite the theft of Jaycee's childhood, she's alive. She's young, and she has hope for the future," Allen said. "It's a very complex situation, but we really believe there's real hope here."
She should have been in high school and going on first dates, maybe leaving home for college, finding her first apartment, falling in love - growing up.
But Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, spent her formative years in captivity. Kidnapped at age 11 in South Lake Tahoe, she gave birth to two daughters when she was just a teenager, and likely lived with the near-constant threat of fear and abuse for 18 years.
She was found Wednesday in Antioch, and Thursday saw her mother for the first time since June 1991. But her recovery has barely started, say experts in child psychiatry and post-traumatic stress.
How well she progresses, along with her two children, depends on the quality of professional help she receives, and the strength of her support network.
"Someone asked me if I think she'll ever have a normal life. I'm not sure 'normal' is the word," said Paula Fass, a history professor at UC Berkeley and author of the book "Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America." "But let's hope she can still live decently and reconnect with that earlier life. The challenge will be to try to integrate these two parts of her life - before she was taken, and her children now - in a way that can be meaningful."
Few cases like it
A case like Dugard's is virtually unheard of. There are examples of children being taken and held captive for months or even years, but none as long as Dugard, and none who were taken as children and returned as adults.
The fact that Dugard now has two children - both the offspring of her accused captor, Phillip Garrido, according to police - further complicates her case. Several child psychologists and kidnapping experts compared Dugard's captivity to the case of an Austrian woman who was found last year after being imprisoned by her own father for 24 years and giving birth to seven of his children.
Dugard "was kept for 18 years, and through an important period in child development, when kids are busy becoming their own persons. It's a difficult period of time to miss out on," said Dr. Stuart Lustig, a UCSF child psychiatrist.
Dugard almost definitely suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a condition in which captives become sympathetic to their captors. Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, told media outlets that she has expressed guilt for bonding with Garrido.
It's common for kidnapped children to feel some compassion for their kidnappers, who abuse them but also become their only caretaker, child psychiatrists said. That creates a cognitive dissonance that isn't easily resolved, especially for children who don't have the life experience to understand what's happened to them.
"Children in this situation need to protect themselves, and the person who is the perpetrator is the one providing the comfort. Identifying with the aggressor feels like protecting yourself," said Dr. Victor Carrion, an expert in post-traumatic stress in children at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "This is not a conscious decision. It's something that happens in survival mode."
Probable PTSD
It's also likely that Dugard is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder - starting with the initial trauma of being kidnapped and kept up over years of abuse and confinement, Carrion said.
According to police, Dugard has lived in an encampment of tents and sheds in Garrido's backyard for most of the last two decades, with little interaction with people other than her captors and her children.
Her daughters, too, were isolated from the outside world - they never attended school or visited a doctor, police said. Just as Dugard must find a way to reintegrate with her family and society, so must her children, child psychiatrists said.
The children, ages 11 and 15, will need to be evaluated - psychiatrists will look at their developmental progress, such as their ability to learn, their language skills, and how they relate to others. The children may also complicate Dugard's recovery because they'll serve as a constant reminder of her captivity, child psychiatrists said. It may be difficult for Dugard to separate her love for her daughters from her complicated feelings toward Garrido.
But it's also possible, Fass said, that having raised two children may help Dugard in her recovery. The children could give her focus in the years ahead, and they may have offered her some small strength while she was held captive, by allowing her to care for someone else.
"Let's assume that the children were her company, and allowed her to exercise her caretaking ability," Fass said. "I would think those are two strengths that could be played on in her recovery. She wasn't entirely isolated, she wasn't just by herself. She was taking care of the children."
The key to reuniting Dugard with her family, experts say, will be to take it slowly. Her mother and stepfather can't expect her to be the 11-year-old girl who was taken 18 years ago, and at the same time Dugard can't expect her family to be the same.
When families are reunited, it's common for everyone to feel some guilt, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The children feel guilty for not being able to escape or for bonding with their kidnappers, and the parents feel guilty for losing them in the first place.
Allen said it will be critical for Dugard and her family to be patient with one another, and especially with Dugard's daughters.
Must start over
"Parent and child typically want to return things to the way they were, and what we've found is that - particularly with these kinds of spans - families have to start all over getting to know each other," Allen said. "The single most important thing for a parent, even when your child is 29 years old, is to love your child unconditionally."
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped seven years ago at age 14 and returned to her family nine months later, said in an interview on CNN on Friday that spending quiet time with her family was critical to her recovery. She believes it's possible to be happy and free again and to not let "this horrible event take over and consume the rest of your life."
Allen said recovery will be difficult, but he's hopeful for Dugard and her family.
"Despite the 18 years that have been lost, despite the theft of Jaycee's childhood, she's alive. She's young, and she has hope for the future," Allen said. "It's a very complex situation, but we really believe there's real hope here."
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:56 am
Some knew her, others only knew of her. But they will never forget the day 18 years ago when the blonde, blue-eyed 11-year-old was snatched in broad daylight on her way to a bus stop.
Her scream. A frantic sprint on a mountain bike by her stepfather up the twisted mountain road as he tried to catch up to the Ford Granada and the unknown man and woman who had just ripped his family's lives to shreds before his eyes.
A world renown tourist destination, South Lake Tahoe on the Nevada-California line is dominated in summer by gamblers, boaters and beach goers. In winter, by gamblers, skiers and snowboarders.
But beneath the facade of a tourist town, where workers come and go with each passing season, is a tight-knit community that never forgot Jaycee Lee Dugard, a little girl who loved the color pink.
Her mother, Terry Probyn, and stepfather, Carl, were relative newcomers to the Tahoe community.
"They were brand new to the district," Sue Bush, Jaycee's fifth grade teacher, said Friday. "I met them at parent-teacher conference twice."
But the community shared their nightmare and embraced them, holding fundraisers, putting up fliers and adorning the town in pink ribbons to keep Jaycee in their hearts after she was kidnapped June 10, 1991.
In 2001, 10 years later, more than 100 people marched on U.S. 50, the main `highway through town, in a pink ribbon parade to remember the little girl and raise awareness of child safety and Jaycees' unsolved kidnapping.
Terry Probyn, who left Tahoe in 1998 and moved to Southern California, returned for the anniversary.
"Someone out there knows what happened," she said at the time. "We need peace. Give us that gift."
It arrived, out of the blue, Wednesday night when she received a call from investigators, saying her daughter had been found alive. Nearly two decades of questions, what ifs, and suspicions against Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, were replaced by tears of joy.
Phillip Garrido, 58, and his 54-year-old wife, Nancy, were arrested last week on suspicion of abducting Dugard. They pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.
Investigators said Dugard was taken to a house in Antioch, where she was kept hidden from the world in a secret, leafy backyard, where she lived in a shed compound.
In South Lake Tahoe, the shy girl last seen in a pink jacket and pink stretch pants is in everyone's hearts again, this time as a grown woman, now 29, and the mother of two children fathered by her alleged abductor.
Joy that she was alive was mixed with anxiety about her physical and emotional well-being, and sadness over the loss of youth and innocence.
"I used to drive by that bus stop all the time," Sue Pritchett, a retired South Lake Tahoe middle school teacher, said while talking with a friend in Dugard's old neighborhood.
"I'm absolutely ecstatic that she's been found," Pritchett said. "But I hope she's OK."
On Friday, Sue Bush, Jaycee's fifth-grade teacher at Meyers Elementary School, recalled the nightmare that day when one of her students didn't show up.
"We got the call just before class started," she told The Associated Press. "Some of the kids already knew about it because they had witnessed it at the bus stop. The kids were very agitated and upset.
"We brought in counselors, and during the week we wrote letters to Jaycee and her mom. We kept her chair and desk set up."
The school, now called Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School, has a memory garden out front, that started as Jaycee's Garden, said former Principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin.
Butterflies painted on the walls symbolize students who have died. There are four; one was for Jaycee.
James Tarwater, school district superintendent, said news of Dugard's reappearance was shocking and disturbing at the same time.
"I think about all the students I've had and watched grow during the last 18 years," he said. "You think of their potential."
Potential denied Jaycee.
Bush, her former teacher, agreed.
"We're all happy she's back. But it's a life ruined," she said sadly.
"I hope in a few weeks, months, whatever it takes, I'll actually be able to talk to Jaycee and Terry," she said. "Terry never gave up hope."
Gillis-Tinlin said Dugard's rescue "is a wonderful ending," but more importantly, "a beginning of the next segment of her life."
South Lake Tahoe, she said, will again bloom in pink bows and ribbons — this time in celebration of a life renewed
Her scream. A frantic sprint on a mountain bike by her stepfather up the twisted mountain road as he tried to catch up to the Ford Granada and the unknown man and woman who had just ripped his family's lives to shreds before his eyes.
A world renown tourist destination, South Lake Tahoe on the Nevada-California line is dominated in summer by gamblers, boaters and beach goers. In winter, by gamblers, skiers and snowboarders.
But beneath the facade of a tourist town, where workers come and go with each passing season, is a tight-knit community that never forgot Jaycee Lee Dugard, a little girl who loved the color pink.
Her mother, Terry Probyn, and stepfather, Carl, were relative newcomers to the Tahoe community.
"They were brand new to the district," Sue Bush, Jaycee's fifth grade teacher, said Friday. "I met them at parent-teacher conference twice."
But the community shared their nightmare and embraced them, holding fundraisers, putting up fliers and adorning the town in pink ribbons to keep Jaycee in their hearts after she was kidnapped June 10, 1991.
In 2001, 10 years later, more than 100 people marched on U.S. 50, the main `highway through town, in a pink ribbon parade to remember the little girl and raise awareness of child safety and Jaycees' unsolved kidnapping.
Terry Probyn, who left Tahoe in 1998 and moved to Southern California, returned for the anniversary.
"Someone out there knows what happened," she said at the time. "We need peace. Give us that gift."
It arrived, out of the blue, Wednesday night when she received a call from investigators, saying her daughter had been found alive. Nearly two decades of questions, what ifs, and suspicions against Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, were replaced by tears of joy.
Phillip Garrido, 58, and his 54-year-old wife, Nancy, were arrested last week on suspicion of abducting Dugard. They pleaded not guilty Friday to a total of 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.
Investigators said Dugard was taken to a house in Antioch, where she was kept hidden from the world in a secret, leafy backyard, where she lived in a shed compound.
In South Lake Tahoe, the shy girl last seen in a pink jacket and pink stretch pants is in everyone's hearts again, this time as a grown woman, now 29, and the mother of two children fathered by her alleged abductor.
Joy that she was alive was mixed with anxiety about her physical and emotional well-being, and sadness over the loss of youth and innocence.
"I used to drive by that bus stop all the time," Sue Pritchett, a retired South Lake Tahoe middle school teacher, said while talking with a friend in Dugard's old neighborhood.
"I'm absolutely ecstatic that she's been found," Pritchett said. "But I hope she's OK."
On Friday, Sue Bush, Jaycee's fifth-grade teacher at Meyers Elementary School, recalled the nightmare that day when one of her students didn't show up.
"We got the call just before class started," she told The Associated Press. "Some of the kids already knew about it because they had witnessed it at the bus stop. The kids were very agitated and upset.
"We brought in counselors, and during the week we wrote letters to Jaycee and her mom. We kept her chair and desk set up."
The school, now called Lake Tahoe Environmental Science Magnet School, has a memory garden out front, that started as Jaycee's Garden, said former Principal Karen Gillis-Tinlin.
Butterflies painted on the walls symbolize students who have died. There are four; one was for Jaycee.
James Tarwater, school district superintendent, said news of Dugard's reappearance was shocking and disturbing at the same time.
"I think about all the students I've had and watched grow during the last 18 years," he said. "You think of their potential."
Potential denied Jaycee.
Bush, her former teacher, agreed.
"We're all happy she's back. But it's a life ruined," she said sadly.
"I hope in a few weeks, months, whatever it takes, I'll actually be able to talk to Jaycee and Terry," she said. "Terry never gave up hope."
Gillis-Tinlin said Dugard's rescue "is a wonderful ending," but more importantly, "a beginning of the next segment of her life."
South Lake Tahoe, she said, will again bloom in pink bows and ribbons — this time in celebration of a life renewed
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:01 am
For kidnap victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard, recovery is rare.
A full portion of her life -- her entire teens and 20s -- was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them.
They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now.
Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children. Despite extensive rehabilitation, media reports indicate she is not doing well.
Even psychologists and psychiatrists skilled at confronting the worst of human nature find it hard to fathom how Dugard can put the pieces back together and live some semblance of a normal existence.
Things could well be worse for Dugard's two daughters, who were born into captivity in a ramshackle Antioch compound and have known only lives of deprivation. They have never attended school or visited a doctor, and their father, Phillip Garrido, is now in El Dorado County Jail facing charges of rape, kidnapping and other criminal offenses.
Authorities searching Garrido's Antioch house Saturday expanded the crime scene to include the neighboring home of Damon Robinson, according to the Associated Press. Robinson told The Times on Friday that Garrido had taken care of the house before he moved in three years ago, and that Robinson found "all the locks on my home were backward. You could lock people in" but not out.
For Dugard and her daughters, adjusting to freedom will be a long, arduous process.
Dugard's top priority, experts said, should be to get reacquainted with her mother -- though not too fast -- and begin intensive psychological and psychiatric treatment.
She is at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder now that her ordeal is over. But if proper steps are taken early, the chances of her developing that and other problems, such as depression, can be minimized.
Still, the psychological scars from her experience will probably affect her day-to-day life for the foreseeable future and may make it impossible for her to ever live on her own, hold a job or form lasting romantic relationships.
"The adjustment to the outside world is going to be very brutal," said psychologist Naftali Berrill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science. "How do you undo years of abuse, years of being held captive?"
Studies of children who have suffered abuse and neglect have found the victims have a high risk of suicide, depression and sexual acting-out.
And a 2000 study of 24 kidnap victims from Italy found that 46% suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and 38% were diagnosed with major depression after their release. More than two-thirds reported "intrusive recollections," maintained a state of hyper-vigilance and said they had a sense of a "foreshortened future." The average length of captivity among these people was only 99 days.
"The picture is not rosy," said psychologist John Lutzker, an expert on child maltreatment who teaches at Georgia State University.
In the first weeks and months after a kidnap victim is freed, he or she is likely to experience anxiety, tension, sleep disturbances, loneliness, headaches and intestinal problems, among other symptoms.
In Europe, kidnap victims are placed in residential treatment centers to give them time to adjust to their changed circumstances, but there are no equivalents in the United States, said Katherine van Wormer of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, who has studied the behavior of kidnapping victims. Both Kampusch and Fritzl were treated in such facilities.
A key issue for Dugard, now 29, will be how she re-establishes her relationship with her mother, Terry Probyn, who lives in Riverside County.
Mother and daughter should resist the urge to try to pick up their lives where they left off in June 1991, when Dugard was abducted in her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood as she walked to a bus stop. Dugard "needs to be in intensive therapy and slowly come back so that her emotional feelings can be transferred back to her mother," van Wormer said.
And though it may seem cathartic to recount 18 years' worth of horrific details, this might make matters worse.
Mental health experts say Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters face tremendous challenges in moving on to any semblance of a normal existence. Comparable cases are rare, and victims haven't fared well.
"It runs the risk of really overwhelming Jaycee with the entirety of what she's going through instead of helping her very, very gradually face the new day-to-day issues of creating a life in this larger world," said Dr. Jim McCracken, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.
Discussing details of the ordeal in public is especially discouraged.
The parents of Shawn Hornbeck were roundly criticized when they appeared with their 15-year-old son on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2007, less than a week after he was rescued from the suburban St. Louis apartment of kidnapper Michael Devlin. The 11-year-old had been bicycling near his Richwoods, Mo., home when Devlin snatched him.
Hornbeck's parents told the national TV audience that their son suffered sexual abuse during his 4 1/2 years of captivity. Media critics and mental health experts were appalled.
Therapy is not just for the victim. Probyn may also need counseling to help her deal with feelings of abandonment and adjust to the fact that her daughter is no longer a little girl, experts said. She may struggle with things Dugard might say that seem infuriating, such as expressing sympathy or affection for her captors.
Such feelings are not uncommon among those who have been kidnapped: Kampusch, whose captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide after her escape, mourned his death and purchased the house in which she was held for those 8 1/2 years.
Carl Probyn, Dugard's stepfather, said his wife told him that Dugard "feels guilty about bonding with" Garrido. (The Probyns are separated.)
"I think he had total control," Carl Probyn said. "Maybe she felt guilty because she didn't fight him off."
Ed Smart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was abducted in June 2002 from her Salt Lake City bedroom and held for nine months by a pair of drifters, said the family saw a psychiatrist for some time.
But they did not ask her to relive or explain the experience to them. She was encouraged to return to activities she had enjoyed before the abduction and has focused on not dwelling on what happened.
Smart said the biggest hurdle is helping the victim know she has nothing to feel guilty about. Society, he said, may ask: "Why didn't you run away?"
"But this is not her fault," he said.
Dugard's two daughters, 11 and 15, will certainly affect their mother's recovery. They "are constant traumatic reminders," McCracken said. "At every moment, they would tend to evoke memories, feelings, even flashbacks of the traumatic experience."
But the girls may have helped her cope with captivity, and the relationships she has with them could now make it easier for her to form attachments with others, van Wormer said.
"It's better that she had the children," she said. "She wasn't alone."
In many ways, the task of building a normal life will be harder for the daughters.
If they haven't already learned basic skills like reading and writing, it's not too late for them to do so -- though it will be more difficult because of their deprivation. And though they will need intensive therapy, they have one advantage of youth: adaptability.
But unlike Dugard, who according to her stepfather recalls a lot about her life before the kidnapping, they don't have any memory of a well-adjusted childhood to draw on.
All they have known is the bizarre dominion Garrido had in his Antioch home.
"These children have missed normal developmental stages for their entire lives," said psychologist Frederic Bemak of George Mason University, an expert in human trafficking. "It's almost like they are from another planet."
A full portion of her life -- her entire teens and 20s -- was poisoned by her abduction at age 11 and the 18 years of brutal captivity and deprivation that followed. So uncommon are situations like hers that mental health experts have few examples to guide them.
They can turn to the case of Natascha Kampusch of Vienna, kidnapped at age 10 on her way to school in 1998 and held for 8 1/2 years before escaping. After an apparent recovery that included her own television talk show and celebrity dating, she retreated into her apartment and rarely leaves it now.
Or they can look to Elisabeth Fritzl of Amstetten, Austria, dragged into a dungeon by her father at 18 and held for 24 years as she gave birth to seven children. Despite extensive rehabilitation, media reports indicate she is not doing well.
Even psychologists and psychiatrists skilled at confronting the worst of human nature find it hard to fathom how Dugard can put the pieces back together and live some semblance of a normal existence.
Things could well be worse for Dugard's two daughters, who were born into captivity in a ramshackle Antioch compound and have known only lives of deprivation. They have never attended school or visited a doctor, and their father, Phillip Garrido, is now in El Dorado County Jail facing charges of rape, kidnapping and other criminal offenses.
Authorities searching Garrido's Antioch house Saturday expanded the crime scene to include the neighboring home of Damon Robinson, according to the Associated Press. Robinson told The Times on Friday that Garrido had taken care of the house before he moved in three years ago, and that Robinson found "all the locks on my home were backward. You could lock people in" but not out.
For Dugard and her daughters, adjusting to freedom will be a long, arduous process.
Dugard's top priority, experts said, should be to get reacquainted with her mother -- though not too fast -- and begin intensive psychological and psychiatric treatment.
She is at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder now that her ordeal is over. But if proper steps are taken early, the chances of her developing that and other problems, such as depression, can be minimized.
Still, the psychological scars from her experience will probably affect her day-to-day life for the foreseeable future and may make it impossible for her to ever live on her own, hold a job or form lasting romantic relationships.
"The adjustment to the outside world is going to be very brutal," said psychologist Naftali Berrill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science. "How do you undo years of abuse, years of being held captive?"
Studies of children who have suffered abuse and neglect have found the victims have a high risk of suicide, depression and sexual acting-out.
And a 2000 study of 24 kidnap victims from Italy found that 46% suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and 38% were diagnosed with major depression after their release. More than two-thirds reported "intrusive recollections," maintained a state of hyper-vigilance and said they had a sense of a "foreshortened future." The average length of captivity among these people was only 99 days.
"The picture is not rosy," said psychologist John Lutzker, an expert on child maltreatment who teaches at Georgia State University.
In the first weeks and months after a kidnap victim is freed, he or she is likely to experience anxiety, tension, sleep disturbances, loneliness, headaches and intestinal problems, among other symptoms.
In Europe, kidnap victims are placed in residential treatment centers to give them time to adjust to their changed circumstances, but there are no equivalents in the United States, said Katherine van Wormer of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, who has studied the behavior of kidnapping victims. Both Kampusch and Fritzl were treated in such facilities.
A key issue for Dugard, now 29, will be how she re-establishes her relationship with her mother, Terry Probyn, who lives in Riverside County.
Mother and daughter should resist the urge to try to pick up their lives where they left off in June 1991, when Dugard was abducted in her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood as she walked to a bus stop. Dugard "needs to be in intensive therapy and slowly come back so that her emotional feelings can be transferred back to her mother," van Wormer said.
And though it may seem cathartic to recount 18 years' worth of horrific details, this might make matters worse.
Mental health experts say Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters face tremendous challenges in moving on to any semblance of a normal existence. Comparable cases are rare, and victims haven't fared well.
"It runs the risk of really overwhelming Jaycee with the entirety of what she's going through instead of helping her very, very gradually face the new day-to-day issues of creating a life in this larger world," said Dr. Jim McCracken, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.
Discussing details of the ordeal in public is especially discouraged.
The parents of Shawn Hornbeck were roundly criticized when they appeared with their 15-year-old son on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2007, less than a week after he was rescued from the suburban St. Louis apartment of kidnapper Michael Devlin. The 11-year-old had been bicycling near his Richwoods, Mo., home when Devlin snatched him.
Hornbeck's parents told the national TV audience that their son suffered sexual abuse during his 4 1/2 years of captivity. Media critics and mental health experts were appalled.
Therapy is not just for the victim. Probyn may also need counseling to help her deal with feelings of abandonment and adjust to the fact that her daughter is no longer a little girl, experts said. She may struggle with things Dugard might say that seem infuriating, such as expressing sympathy or affection for her captors.
Such feelings are not uncommon among those who have been kidnapped: Kampusch, whose captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, committed suicide after her escape, mourned his death and purchased the house in which she was held for those 8 1/2 years.
Carl Probyn, Dugard's stepfather, said his wife told him that Dugard "feels guilty about bonding with" Garrido. (The Probyns are separated.)
"I think he had total control," Carl Probyn said. "Maybe she felt guilty because she didn't fight him off."
Ed Smart, whose 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was abducted in June 2002 from her Salt Lake City bedroom and held for nine months by a pair of drifters, said the family saw a psychiatrist for some time.
But they did not ask her to relive or explain the experience to them. She was encouraged to return to activities she had enjoyed before the abduction and has focused on not dwelling on what happened.
Smart said the biggest hurdle is helping the victim know she has nothing to feel guilty about. Society, he said, may ask: "Why didn't you run away?"
"But this is not her fault," he said.
Dugard's two daughters, 11 and 15, will certainly affect their mother's recovery. They "are constant traumatic reminders," McCracken said. "At every moment, they would tend to evoke memories, feelings, even flashbacks of the traumatic experience."
But the girls may have helped her cope with captivity, and the relationships she has with them could now make it easier for her to form attachments with others, van Wormer said.
"It's better that she had the children," she said. "She wasn't alone."
In many ways, the task of building a normal life will be harder for the daughters.
If they haven't already learned basic skills like reading and writing, it's not too late for them to do so -- though it will be more difficult because of their deprivation. And though they will need intensive therapy, they have one advantage of youth: adaptability.
But unlike Dugard, who according to her stepfather recalls a lot about her life before the kidnapping, they don't have any memory of a well-adjusted childhood to draw on.
All they have known is the bizarre dominion Garrido had in his Antioch home.
"These children have missed normal developmental stages for their entire lives," said psychologist Frederic Bemak of George Mason University, an expert in human trafficking. "It's almost like they are from another planet."
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Neighbor spoke to Jaycee Lee Dugard through fence
tears4caylee on Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:16 am
An Antioch resident whose backyard shares a fence with the Garrido property once spoke to a little girl through that fence, he said Friday. She told him her name was Jaycee.
Patrick McQuaid, 27, was a child when he saw a blonde girl through the chicken wire fence that used to separate his Bown Lane backyard from the Garridos' yard. He said he believes it was around the summer of 1991, not long after Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped from a South Lake Tahoe bus stop.
"I thought she was pretty," McQuaid said.
After he learned Jaycee's name, McQuaid, who had never seen any children through the fence before, asked whether she lived there or was just visiting. He said she told him she was living there, but before he could ask more questions Phillip Garrido came out and took her into the house.
"I didn't think anything of it. I was young," McQuaid said.
Soon after, Garrido built the eight-foot privacy fence that now separates the two yards. McQuaid said he never saw the girl again. The next time he saw children near the Garrido house was this summer, when he saw two young girls riding in Garrido's car.
Though the two children Dugard allegedly bore with Garrido are 15 and 11, McQuaid said the children he saw in Garrido's car looked younger — closer to 8 and 10 years old. He took note of it, he said, because he knew Garrido was a registered sex offender.
But Garrido had always had a reputation in the neighborhood for being weird, McQuaid said, and a nickname to reflect that.
"To all the kids in the neighborhood he was 'Creepy Phil,' " he said.
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
TomTerrific0420 on Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:24 pm
Poster's Note: Thanks to tears4caylee for bringing this possible connected case to our attention; You will find a duplicate post with a separate topic in the Long Term Cases Forum
Follow this link to this little girl who had the same possible fate as
Jaycee Dugard. It is possible that Garrido and his wife were the
kidnappers. Police looking for a link. Her age progression even looks
like Jaycee. I know it's morbid, but I find this fascinating....
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/g/garecht_michaela.html
MICHAELA GARECHT
Age Progressed 
Among the cold cases police may reopen is the disappearance of
nine-year-old Michaela Garecht, who was kidnapped from a car park in
Hawyard,
about an hour's drive from the Garridos' home. The schoolgirl was
pulled into a car in November 1988, three months after Garrido was
released from jail for rape.
Two other girls also went missing in the area around the time Jaycee was snatched.
Follow this link to this little girl who had the same possible fate as
Jaycee Dugard. It is possible that Garrido and his wife were the
kidnappers. Police looking for a link. Her age progression even looks
like Jaycee. I know it's morbid, but I find this fascinating....
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/g/garecht_michaela.html
MICHAELA GARECHT
Age Progressed Among the cold cases police may reopen is the disappearance of
nine-year-old Michaela Garecht, who was kidnapped from a car park in
Hawyard,
about an hour's drive from the Garridos' home. The schoolgirl was
pulled into a car in November 1988, three months after Garrido was
released from jail for rape.
Two other girls also went missing in the area around the time Jaycee was snatched.
TomTerrific0420- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
VERY STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS MISSING WITHIN A 148 MILE RADIUS BETWEEN 1979-1991
tears4caylee on Mon Aug 31, 2009 9:18 pm
VERY STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS MISSING WITHIN A 148 MILE RADIUS BETWEEN 1979-1991
tears4caylee Today at 9:37 pmI POSTED THIS LINK IT IS A GOOGLE MAP FOR THESE MISSING GIRLS.\\
STARTING WITH:
JAYCE DUGARD WAS KIDNAPPED FROM LAKE TAHOE CA WHICH IS A LITTLE FURTHER NORTH, BUT THE REST OF THESE GIRLS ARE ALL IN THE SAME AREA...
A: AMBER SWARTZ - PINOLE CALIFORNIA MISSING JUNE 1988
B: MICHAELA JOY GARECHT - HAYWARD, CALIFORNIA NOV 1988
C: ANGELA BUGAY - ANTIOCH CALIFORNIA NOV. 1983
D: TARA COSSEY - SAN PABLO CALIFORNIA JUNE 1978
E: EILEEN MISHELOFF DUBLIN, CA JAN. 1989
F: NICKI CAMPBELL FAIRFIELD, CA 1991
AND LET US NOT FORGET THAT JAYCEE DUGARD WAS FOUND IN ANTIOCH...CALIF. SAME PLACE THAT ANGELA BUGAY WENT MISSING..
[/size][/i][/b]WHAT IS STRANGE IS THAT THEY ARE ALL ON THE SAME ROUTE. COULD PHILIP GARIDO BE THE ONE THAT COMMITTED ALL THESE ABDUCTIONS? I HOPE SOMEONE LOOKS INTO THIS.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=PINOLE+CALIFORNIA&daddr=Antioch,+CA+to:HAYWARD,+CA+to:SAN+PABLO+CA+to:DUBLIN,+CA+to:FAIRFIELD,+CA&hl=en&geocode=%3BFReLQwId9WS9-A%3B%3B%3B%3B&mra=ls&sll=37.827141,-122.074585&sspn=0.711571,1.582031&ie=UTF8&ll=38.164795,-122.074585&spn=0.708302,1.582031&z=9
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:01 am
WEDNESDAY MORNING NEWS ROUNDUP
An extensive search of the house of suspected kidnappers Phillip and Nancy Garrido does not appear to have yielded any evidence to connect the couple to several unsolved murders in Pittsburg in the late 1990s, Pittsburg police Lt. Brian Addington said Tuesday.
Several items, including a bone fragment that may or may not be human, will require further forensic examination before they can be completely discounted, Addington said.
Pittsburg police, along with Antioch police, the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office and the FBI, searched the Garridos' house and an adjacent property on Walnut Avenue in unincorporated Contra Costa County just outside of Antioch for four days.
Among other things, they were looking for evidence that could connect the couple to the unsolved murders of Lisa Norrell, 15, Jessica Frederick, 24, and Rachel Cruise, 32, Addington said.
Antioch police and the sheriff's office were also looking for evidence that would connect the Garridos to crimes in their jurisdictions.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido were arrested last Wednesday on suspicion of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard in June 1991 from in front of her South Lake Tahoe home and holding her captive for the past 18 years in their home.
The couple has been charged in El Dorado County Superior Court with a total of 29 felonies, including kidnapping, forcible rape and false imprisonment. They pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday, according to the district attorney's office.
Pittsburg police are continuing to investigate the unsolved murder cases and are hoping that the extensive media coverage of the search will renew the public's interest in the cases and bring fresh leads to the investigation.
-0-
The state parole agent who helped solve the 18-year-old kidnapping case of Jaycee Dugard had been Phillip Garrido's parole supervisor for the past nine months, but never saw Dugard or the two children she had with Garrido, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said Tuesday.
Over the years, Garrido, the registered sex offender suspected of kidnapping Dugard 18 years ago, has had several different parole agents and the CDCR is examining their supervision of him to see what they could have done to have discovered the victims earlier, Hinkle said.
The parole officer supervising Garrido when he was arrested last Wednesday had met with Garrido two to three times a month and made unannounced visits to his house, but never saw any evidence to lead him to believe that Dugard and her two daughters, ages 11 and 15, were being kept in the backyard, Hinkle said.
Garrido was on parole after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman near Lake Tahoe in 1976. He was sentenced in 1977 to 50 years in prison, according to Nevada Department of Corrections spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee.
He served nine years in federal and state prisons, but was paroled to California in 1988, according to Pardee.
Garrido was out on parole in 1991 when Dugard was kidnapped, and, according to the El Dorado County Sheriff's office, is believed to have been living at the home on Walnut Avenue with his wife when they took her.
Garrido was sent back to prison for a month in 1993 for violating his parole, according to Brad Murray, a correctional systems officer at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
An extensive search of the house of suspected kidnappers Phillip and Nancy Garrido does not appear to have yielded any evidence to connect the couple to several unsolved murders in Pittsburg in the late 1990s, Pittsburg police Lt. Brian Addington said Tuesday.
Several items, including a bone fragment that may or may not be human, will require further forensic examination before they can be completely discounted, Addington said.
Pittsburg police, along with Antioch police, the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office and the FBI, searched the Garridos' house and an adjacent property on Walnut Avenue in unincorporated Contra Costa County just outside of Antioch for four days.
Among other things, they were looking for evidence that could connect the couple to the unsolved murders of Lisa Norrell, 15, Jessica Frederick, 24, and Rachel Cruise, 32, Addington said.
Antioch police and the sheriff's office were also looking for evidence that would connect the Garridos to crimes in their jurisdictions.
Phillip and Nancy Garrido were arrested last Wednesday on suspicion of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard in June 1991 from in front of her South Lake Tahoe home and holding her captive for the past 18 years in their home.
The couple has been charged in El Dorado County Superior Court with a total of 29 felonies, including kidnapping, forcible rape and false imprisonment. They pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday, according to the district attorney's office.
Pittsburg police are continuing to investigate the unsolved murder cases and are hoping that the extensive media coverage of the search will renew the public's interest in the cases and bring fresh leads to the investigation.
-0-
The state parole agent who helped solve the 18-year-old kidnapping case of Jaycee Dugard had been Phillip Garrido's parole supervisor for the past nine months, but never saw Dugard or the two children she had with Garrido, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said Tuesday.
Over the years, Garrido, the registered sex offender suspected of kidnapping Dugard 18 years ago, has had several different parole agents and the CDCR is examining their supervision of him to see what they could have done to have discovered the victims earlier, Hinkle said.
The parole officer supervising Garrido when he was arrested last Wednesday had met with Garrido two to three times a month and made unannounced visits to his house, but never saw any evidence to lead him to believe that Dugard and her two daughters, ages 11 and 15, were being kept in the backyard, Hinkle said.
Garrido was on parole after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman near Lake Tahoe in 1976. He was sentenced in 1977 to 50 years in prison, according to Nevada Department of Corrections spokeswoman Suzanne Pardee.
He served nine years in federal and state prisons, but was paroled to California in 1988, according to Pardee.
Garrido was out on parole in 1991 when Dugard was kidnapped, and, according to the El Dorado County Sheriff's office, is believed to have been living at the home on Walnut Avenue with his wife when they took her.
Garrido was sent back to prison for a month in 1993 for violating his parole, according to Brad Murray, a correctional systems officer at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Pink ribbon parade for Jaycee
tears4caylee on Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:05 am
Jaycee Lee Dugard prior to her abduction in 1991. (AP)
A pink ribbon parade is planned for Jaycee Lee Dugard Sunday to celebrate her reappearance after 18 years of captivity.
Jaycee was kidnapped in 1991 from a school bus stop when she was only 11-years-old.
The celebration is being organized by Soroptimist International of South Lake Tahoe, Calif. According to the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the parade will begin at the El Dorado County branch library on Rufus Allen Blvd. and proceed along Hwy. 50 to South Tahoe Middle School.
The route is the reverse of that walked on the 10th anniversary of Jaycee’s disappearance in 2001, according to Kathay Lovell, a South Lake Tahoe City Council member.
The theme of the parade is pink because that was Jaycee’s favorite color and her classmates at the time of her disappearance had started a pink ribbon campaign hoping for her safe return home
For the complete story click here: http://www.examiner.com/x-1168-Crime-Examiner~y2009m9d2-Pink-ribbon-parade-for-Jaycee-Lee-Dugard-to-take-place-on-Sunday
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
What the reunion was like; Aunt of Jaycee
TomTerrific0420 on Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:21 am
Terry Probyn took a brush to her daughter's blond hair and slowly combed
through it — a tender ritual she had not performed in 18 years, when
her girl, Jaycee Lee Dugard, was just 11. Reunited with Jaycee last week in Northern California, Probyn
got to play mother again to the girl who was snatched away from her —
touching her hair, kissing her face, delighting at the sound of her
voice.
Tina Dugard, Terry's sister and Jaycee's aunt, sat and watched — disbelief mingled with joy.
"I remember thinking, 'Wow, she's French-braiding Jaycee's hair for the first time in 18 years,' " Tina Dugard said.
The reunification of Terry Probyn with her daughter — and her
interactions, for the first time, with Jaycee's two daughters, 11 and
15 — played out in private as the chilling tale of Jaycee's alleged
abductor, Phillip Craig Garrido, seized headlines worldwide.
In an exclusive interview with the Orange County Register, Tina
Dugard spoke for the first time publicly about how the reunified family
is doing. She spent five days with Probyn, Jaycee and the two girls.
"There's a sense of comfort and optimism, a sense of happiness.
. . . Jaycee and her girls are happy," said Tina Dugard, who was 13
when Jaycee was born and very close to her.
Terry Probyn lived with her sister for 10 years before recently moving out.
"People probably want to think that it's been this horrible, scary thing for all of us,"
Tina Dugard said of the past several days as the family sought to reconnect
in cloistered rooms, with law enforcement officials and counselors
hovering — and media from around the world trying to interview them.
"(But) the horrible, scary thing happened 18 years ago, and
continued to happen for the last 18 years. The darkness and despair
(has lifted.)"
Dugard pointed to a Barbie doll, still in its box, sitting on a table in her living room.
It was a Christmas present for Jaycee the year she disappeared, 1991 — a present Dugard never was able to give her niece.
Jaycee was kidnapped earlier that year after her family moved to South Lake Tahoe.
"I kept thinking, 'Tomorrow. They'll find her tomorrow,' " Dugard recalled. "Then it was, 'For sure by the weekend.'
"Then it was, 'By Thanksgiving. I know it won't pass.' And then, 'For sure it will be Christmas.' "
Instead of ripping open the box containing her Happy Holidays
Christmas Barbie, Jaycee was thrown into her own airtight container:
the squalid Antioch-area backyard of a convicted rapist and registered
sex offender who would go on to father Jaycee's daughters, according to
authorities.
Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, were arrested last week
and charged in the kidnapping, rape and imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard.
The couple has pleaded not guilty.
Tina Dugard would not comment on aspects of the ongoing
investigation, such as how Jaycee and her daughters were treated by the
Garridos.
She said Jaycee's daughters "know what's been going on," but
they have not been allowed to watch television or read any coverage of
the Garrido story.
She said she has not pressed Jaycee and her daughters to discuss life in the cluttered backyard collection of tents and shacks.
"Right now, it's about reconnecting," she said.
She wouldn't say whether the two girls, as some media outlets have reported, believed Jaycee was their older sister.
"I have heard them call my sister 'Mom,' " Dugard said. " (They say) 'Where's Mom?'"
While in captivity, Jaycee was able to teach her girls to read
and write. Dugard said she's not sure how, although photos of the
compound show the three had access to books.
"They are educated and bright," she said of Jaycee's children,
whose names have been reported as Starlet, 15, and Angel, 11. Dugard
would not comment on whether those names are accurate.
"It's clear they've been on the Internet and know a lot of
things," Dugard said. "It's clear that Jaycee did a great job with the
limited resources she had and her limited education."
During her five-day visit, Dugard recalled staring up at the
sky on a starry night with one of Jaycee's daughters, who proceeded to
point out the names of constellations.
Another daughter happened upon a plant.
"That's a nasturtium!" she blurted out. "It's edible. Do you want to eat it?"
Dugard, 42, was making a dinner salad when she got a call from a
sheriff's investigator in El Dorado County last Wednesday. He was
looking for Terry Probyn.
She then received a call from Terry's other daughter, 19-year-old Shayna, who told her Jaycee had been found.
"I don't know what I felt ... I just said, 'What?' I'm sure I
repeated that word several times . . . we both started crying
hysterically."
Dugard's heart raced and her stomach churned all night.
She finally fell asleep for an hour, almost missing the
early-morning flight from Ontario Airport with Terry Probyn and Shayna
to reunite with Jaycee and meet her daughters.
FBI officials met the three at an undisclosed location.
Probyn, 50, was the first to meet Jaycee and the girls — separately, in a room.
Then it was Tina Dugard's turn.
Jaycee Dugard threw open her arms.
"Auntie Tina!"
The two instantly recognized each other.
"I looked at her and I knew right away. After 18 years, you have a sense of, 'Could this possibly be true?'"
Jaycee instantly recognized her, she said.
"She absolutely knew who I was," Tina said. "She remembered me right away. . . . It was one of the happiest moments of my life."
Tina can't remember what she told Jaycee.
"I went forward and cried and hugged her and held her as tight as I possibly could. It was surreal, and it was fabulous."
Tina said Jaycee and the girls looked healthy — although she
declined to detail their appearances, saying she wanted to respect
their privacy.
"She does seem like a 29-year-old woman," she said of Jaycee. "She's fabulous, and she's beautiful."
The girls have their mother's blond hair and bright blue eyes and big smile, she said.
Shayna told her sister, Jaycee, that she was so happy to meet
her — a girl she had known until then only through old photographs and
family movies, and media accounts of her abduction.
There was an "instant connection . . . it was almost a genetic
connection . . . an instant sense of family, for all of us," Tina said.
During the next several days, the six — Tina and Terry, Jaycee and her daughters, and Shayna — did "normal" family things.
"(There was) laughing and crying and sitting quietly and holding hands," Dugard said.
"All three are very tight. There was a lot of sitting next (to each other). Holding hands.
She recalled the youngest daughter sitting next to her sister on
a love seat and throwing her legs over her — just like a sister would
do.
One night, they played the board game "Apples to Apples."
Tina and Jaycee watched the movie "Enchanted" on DVD, on another night.
They talked about recent movies, and Jaycee said she wanted to see the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy, "The Proposal."
Jaycee read a lot.
"She likes mysteries," Tina said.
Tina drew pictures with Jaycee's girls.
They also played Nintendo DS. One of the girls loves the "Zelda" games, and both love "Super Mario Smash Brothers."
One day, Tina and one of Jaycee's daughters lay on the grass.
They stared at the clouds and saw fluffy cotton shapes.
"It was a beautiful day," Tina Dugard said.
The girls talked of their love of animals, and climbing trees.
Dugard, a teacher for 18 years who now teaches third-graders,
would touch Jaycee and her girls a lot — as if to say, "you're real —
you're really here."
Dugard declined to speculate on how Jaycee and her daughters
will fare during the coming weeks, months and years — though she said
counseling will play a part.
She is optimistic about the girls.
"I'm a teacher. I know kids. And I can tell you that they are a normal 11- and 15-year-old."
For now, the family is focusing on the moment — and getting to know each other.
"It's all about strengthening those bonds that really didn't weaken, but needed to be brought back together," Dugard said.
"We are all so overjoyed. My sister has spontaneous moments of joy.
We'll be talking, and she'll just suddenly burst into happy tears, with a big smile on her face . . .
"The fact that (Jaycee) is home sinks in in little pieces . . .
she's there, and we know she's there, but sometimes you're just taken
aback by the joy, and it bursts out.
"I've had a lot of happy things happen in my life, but it's a different kind of happy, because it's a happy you don't expect."
For now, Dugard doesn't want to dwell on the dark, horrible things that authorities believe happened in Garrido's backyard.
"I may never know what happened (to Jaycee)," she said. "But she's home."
through it — a tender ritual she had not performed in 18 years, when
her girl, Jaycee Lee Dugard, was just 11. Reunited with Jaycee last week in Northern California, Probyn
got to play mother again to the girl who was snatched away from her —
touching her hair, kissing her face, delighting at the sound of her
voice.
Tina Dugard, Terry's sister and Jaycee's aunt, sat and watched — disbelief mingled with joy.
"I remember thinking, 'Wow, she's French-braiding Jaycee's hair for the first time in 18 years,' " Tina Dugard said.
The reunification of Terry Probyn with her daughter — and her
interactions, for the first time, with Jaycee's two daughters, 11 and
15 — played out in private as the chilling tale of Jaycee's alleged
abductor, Phillip Craig Garrido, seized headlines worldwide.
In an exclusive interview with the Orange County Register, Tina
Dugard spoke for the first time publicly about how the reunified family
is doing. She spent five days with Probyn, Jaycee and the two girls.
"There's a sense of comfort and optimism, a sense of happiness.
. . . Jaycee and her girls are happy," said Tina Dugard, who was 13
when Jaycee was born and very close to her.
Terry Probyn lived with her sister for 10 years before recently moving out.
"People probably want to think that it's been this horrible, scary thing for all of us,"
Tina Dugard said of the past several days as the family sought to reconnect
in cloistered rooms, with law enforcement officials and counselors
hovering — and media from around the world trying to interview them.
"(But) the horrible, scary thing happened 18 years ago, and
continued to happen for the last 18 years. The darkness and despair
(has lifted.)"
Dugard pointed to a Barbie doll, still in its box, sitting on a table in her living room.
It was a Christmas present for Jaycee the year she disappeared, 1991 — a present Dugard never was able to give her niece.
Jaycee was kidnapped earlier that year after her family moved to South Lake Tahoe.
"I kept thinking, 'Tomorrow. They'll find her tomorrow,' " Dugard recalled. "Then it was, 'For sure by the weekend.'
"Then it was, 'By Thanksgiving. I know it won't pass.' And then, 'For sure it will be Christmas.' "
Instead of ripping open the box containing her Happy Holidays
Christmas Barbie, Jaycee was thrown into her own airtight container:
the squalid Antioch-area backyard of a convicted rapist and registered
sex offender who would go on to father Jaycee's daughters, according to
authorities.
Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, were arrested last week
and charged in the kidnapping, rape and imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard.
The couple has pleaded not guilty.
Tina Dugard would not comment on aspects of the ongoing
investigation, such as how Jaycee and her daughters were treated by the
Garridos.
She said Jaycee's daughters "know what's been going on," but
they have not been allowed to watch television or read any coverage of
the Garrido story.
She said she has not pressed Jaycee and her daughters to discuss life in the cluttered backyard collection of tents and shacks.
"Right now, it's about reconnecting," she said.
She wouldn't say whether the two girls, as some media outlets have reported, believed Jaycee was their older sister.
"I have heard them call my sister 'Mom,' " Dugard said. " (They say) 'Where's Mom?'"
While in captivity, Jaycee was able to teach her girls to read
and write. Dugard said she's not sure how, although photos of the
compound show the three had access to books.
"They are educated and bright," she said of Jaycee's children,
whose names have been reported as Starlet, 15, and Angel, 11. Dugard
would not comment on whether those names are accurate.
"It's clear they've been on the Internet and know a lot of
things," Dugard said. "It's clear that Jaycee did a great job with the
limited resources she had and her limited education."
During her five-day visit, Dugard recalled staring up at the
sky on a starry night with one of Jaycee's daughters, who proceeded to
point out the names of constellations.
Another daughter happened upon a plant.
"That's a nasturtium!" she blurted out. "It's edible. Do you want to eat it?"
Dugard, 42, was making a dinner salad when she got a call from a
sheriff's investigator in El Dorado County last Wednesday. He was
looking for Terry Probyn.
She then received a call from Terry's other daughter, 19-year-old Shayna, who told her Jaycee had been found.
"I don't know what I felt ... I just said, 'What?' I'm sure I
repeated that word several times . . . we both started crying
hysterically."
Dugard's heart raced and her stomach churned all night.
She finally fell asleep for an hour, almost missing the
early-morning flight from Ontario Airport with Terry Probyn and Shayna
to reunite with Jaycee and meet her daughters.
FBI officials met the three at an undisclosed location.
Probyn, 50, was the first to meet Jaycee and the girls — separately, in a room.
Then it was Tina Dugard's turn.
Jaycee Dugard threw open her arms.
"Auntie Tina!"
The two instantly recognized each other.
"I looked at her and I knew right away. After 18 years, you have a sense of, 'Could this possibly be true?'"
Jaycee instantly recognized her, she said.
"She absolutely knew who I was," Tina said. "She remembered me right away. . . . It was one of the happiest moments of my life."
Tina can't remember what she told Jaycee.
"I went forward and cried and hugged her and held her as tight as I possibly could. It was surreal, and it was fabulous."
Tina said Jaycee and the girls looked healthy — although she
declined to detail their appearances, saying she wanted to respect
their privacy.
"She does seem like a 29-year-old woman," she said of Jaycee. "She's fabulous, and she's beautiful."
The girls have their mother's blond hair and bright blue eyes and big smile, she said.
Shayna told her sister, Jaycee, that she was so happy to meet
her — a girl she had known until then only through old photographs and
family movies, and media accounts of her abduction.
There was an "instant connection . . . it was almost a genetic
connection . . . an instant sense of family, for all of us," Tina said.
During the next several days, the six — Tina and Terry, Jaycee and her daughters, and Shayna — did "normal" family things.
"(There was) laughing and crying and sitting quietly and holding hands," Dugard said.
"All three are very tight. There was a lot of sitting next (to each other). Holding hands.
She recalled the youngest daughter sitting next to her sister on
a love seat and throwing her legs over her — just like a sister would
do.
One night, they played the board game "Apples to Apples."
Tina and Jaycee watched the movie "Enchanted" on DVD, on another night.
They talked about recent movies, and Jaycee said she wanted to see the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy, "The Proposal."
Jaycee read a lot.
"She likes mysteries," Tina said.
Tina drew pictures with Jaycee's girls.
They also played Nintendo DS. One of the girls loves the "Zelda" games, and both love "Super Mario Smash Brothers."
One day, Tina and one of Jaycee's daughters lay on the grass.
They stared at the clouds and saw fluffy cotton shapes.
"It was a beautiful day," Tina Dugard said.
The girls talked of their love of animals, and climbing trees.
Dugard, a teacher for 18 years who now teaches third-graders,
would touch Jaycee and her girls a lot — as if to say, "you're real —
you're really here."
Dugard declined to speculate on how Jaycee and her daughters
will fare during the coming weeks, months and years — though she said
counseling will play a part.
She is optimistic about the girls.
"I'm a teacher. I know kids. And I can tell you that they are a normal 11- and 15-year-old."
For now, the family is focusing on the moment — and getting to know each other.
"It's all about strengthening those bonds that really didn't weaken, but needed to be brought back together," Dugard said.
"We are all so overjoyed. My sister has spontaneous moments of joy.
We'll be talking, and she'll just suddenly burst into happy tears, with a big smile on her face . . .
"The fact that (Jaycee) is home sinks in in little pieces . . .
she's there, and we know she's there, but sometimes you're just taken
aback by the joy, and it bursts out.
"I've had a lot of happy things happen in my life, but it's a different kind of happy, because it's a happy you don't expect."
For now, Dugard doesn't want to dwell on the dark, horrible things that authorities believe happened in Garrido's backyard.
"I may never know what happened (to Jaycee)," she said. "But she's home."
TomTerrific0420- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Thu Sep 03, 2009 5:38 pm
Jaycee Lee Dugard’s father wants to kill sex offender Phillip Garrido
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The biological father of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the girl who was kidnapped and held captive for 18 years, said he wants to kill her abductor, Phillip Garrido. Kenneth Slayton told the Mirror that if he ever met Garrido, the convicted sex offender would... Read more »
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The biological father of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the girl who was kidnapped and held captive for 18 years, said he wants to kill her abductor, Phillip Garrido. Kenneth Slayton told the Mirror that if he ever met Garrido, the convicted sex offender would... Read more »
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
tears4caylee on Thu Sep 03, 2009 5:39 pm
Jaycee Lee Dugard: Nancy Garrido worked as nursing aide (photo and video links)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
For several years, the woman accused of helping to kidnap and hold captive Jaycee Lee Dugard, worked as a nursing and physical therapy aide in Contra Costa County, Calif. Nancy Garrido and her sex offender husband, Phillip, allegedly kidnapped Jaycee... Read more »
Thursday, September 3, 2009
For several years, the woman accused of helping to kidnap and hold captive Jaycee Lee Dugard, worked as a nursing and physical therapy aide in Contra Costa County, Calif. Nancy Garrido and her sex offender husband, Phillip, allegedly kidnapped Jaycee... Read more »
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Oprah Winfrey top contender for first interview with Jaycee Dugard & daughters (photos, video links)
tears4caylee on Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:09 pm
Major media players are all vying for the first interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard and her two daughters, Starlite, 15, and Angel, 11.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oprah Winfrey sent a personal letter to Jaycee, hoping to convince her to tell her harrowing and bizarre story on her show first.
Other sources report that beside Oprah, other top contenders for an interview with Jaycee and her daughters include Barbara Walters of ‘The View’ and Diane Sawyer of ‘Good Morning America.’
Jaycee was kidnapped from a South Lake Tahoe school bus stop in 1991, when she was only 11-years-old, and subsequently held captive for 18 years. Sex offender Phillip Garrido, and his wife Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to charges surrounding the case.
Garrido fathered Jaycee’s two daughters—with Jaycee giving birth to the first child in Garrido’s backyard when she was only 14-years old.
Aces Show Biz reports that a movie and book deal are likely in the works for Jaycee regarding her story.
To read the criminal complaint against the Garridos, click here.
To see video of the initial press conference regarding the case, click here.
To see the early search for Jaycee, click here.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oprah Winfrey sent a personal letter to Jaycee, hoping to convince her to tell her harrowing and bizarre story on her show first.
Other sources report that beside Oprah, other top contenders for an interview with Jaycee and her daughters include Barbara Walters of ‘The View’ and Diane Sawyer of ‘Good Morning America.’
Jaycee was kidnapped from a South Lake Tahoe school bus stop in 1991, when she was only 11-years-old, and subsequently held captive for 18 years. Sex offender Phillip Garrido, and his wife Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to charges surrounding the case.
Garrido fathered Jaycee’s two daughters—with Jaycee giving birth to the first child in Garrido’s backyard when she was only 14-years old.
Aces Show Biz reports that a movie and book deal are likely in the works for Jaycee regarding her story.
To read the criminal complaint against the Garridos, click here.
To see video of the initial press conference regarding the case, click here.
To see the early search for Jaycee, click here.
tears4caylee- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
TomTerrific0420 on Sun Sep 06, 2009 5:05 pm
About 500 people in the town where Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped
18 years ago are taking part in a parade celebrating her astounding
reappearance and raising money for her and her two daughters.Sunday's
parade followed the reverse route of a march held on the 10th
anniversary of Dugard's abduction from a school bus stop. Missing
person posters that volunteers handed out in the days after she
disappeared in 1991 were stacked near the start and updated with large
black circles with slashes drawn through them.Dugard had been
living in the South Lake Tahoe area with her mother, stepfather and
infant sister for less than a year when she was snatched off the
street. Her stepfather has said they moved there from Southern
California partly because they thought it would be safer.
18 years ago are taking part in a parade celebrating her astounding
reappearance and raising money for her and her two daughters.Sunday's
parade followed the reverse route of a march held on the 10th
anniversary of Dugard's abduction from a school bus stop. Missing
person posters that volunteers handed out in the days after she
disappeared in 1991 were stacked near the start and updated with large
black circles with slashes drawn through them.Dugard had been
living in the South Lake Tahoe area with her mother, stepfather and
infant sister for less than a year when she was snatched off the
street. Her stepfather has said they moved there from Southern
California partly because they thought it would be safer.
TomTerrific0420- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
kygirl09 on Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:49 pm
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Jaycee Lee Dugard had lived in South Lake Tahoe for less than a year before being yanked inside a car by the strangers who would hold her hostage for almost two decades. Now 29 years old, her memories of the area — the 60-foot pine trees shading her house, the chickens she kept there, her friends at school — may be fragments in her mind. But in her absence, she has loomed large in the lives of people here.
On Sunday, the wood railings of her family’s old house were wrapped in pink ribbons, a symbol of her abduction. Along Lake Tahoe Boulevard, fronting the vast lake, pink bows and balloons festooned tree trunks, telephone poles, and the clothes of about 2,000 people gathered to march in honor of her being found.
Neither Ms. Dugard nor her family members attended, though they were aware of the event, said Erika Schulte, a spokesperson for the family. But the parade was not solely for them, said Karen Gillis-Tinlin, who was principal of Jaycee’s elementary school in 1991.
“There’s a sadness that this happened here,” Ms. Gillis-Tinlin said. “It changed Tahoe forever. Some of us want to connect with that.”
Angela Gooch, 30, owns a hair salon in this town of about 30,000. She grew up here and has friends in common with Jaycee.
“We’re a small community. Not one person who grew up here doesn’t know her name,” Ms. Gooch said of Jaycee. The case “ consumed us,” she said.
In the years right after Jaycee’s abduction, said Ms. Gooch, the missing girl was still a peer, a classmate in jeopardy just out of reach. But she remained frozen in time. As her case went cold, she said, “Jaycee” became as much an idea as a person. The pink ribbons that sprouted each year on bushes, backpacks and car antennas marked the fear that “changed things forever,” said Ms. Gooch, as much as they honored the Jaycee’s memory.
“As a kid, I would go into the forest with friends and we would try to find her,” said Ms. Gooch, adding, “Over the years, even as an adult, I always thought of her when I went hiking. But she was still little, and I had grown up.”
Stephanie Russell, 29, lived two blocks from Ms. Dugard and shared a school bus from 1990-1991. For almost a year, she said over the phone from Santa Rosa, Calif., they would spend most afternoons at each other’s homes, feeding the chickens that Jaycee kept under her porch, or playing games in the trees. “She was shy, and I was shy,” Ms. Russell said.
The week before her abduction, she said, Jaycee’s parents had conferred with hers and decided to allow the girls to walk alone and “meet in the middle” between their homes. “It was a huge moment,” said Ms. Russell. “I remember the excitement of seeing her walk toward me.”
Jaycee was snatched as she climbed the hill to her bus stop in June of 1991. A convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have been charged in the case. Jaycee was in the fifth grade, but her classmates carried her with them for years, said Ms. Gillis-Tinlin.
“They gave speeches about her at their high school graduation,” she said, “There was always that connection.”
The teenagers around town now were not born when Jaycee was taken said Duane Wallace, who ran an after school program at the time of the abduction; Jaycee attended “once or twice.” But they have heard about the girl who vanished.
“The kids around here,” said Mr. Wallace, at a football game Saturday, “never fully told their parents how much it terrified them. But I saw it change them. I saw how scared they were.”
Some of Jaycee’s classmates are raising their own children now. Most keep their daughters and sons close, said Ms. Gooch, whose daughter is 10, and use Jaycee as a cautionary tale.
The story, told repeatedly for almost two decades, includes monsters befitting a gothic fairytale. The police sketches of Nancy and Phillip Garrido — with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks — seeped into the nightmares of children here, Ms. Gooch said.
But some loathing was misplaced. Carl Probyn, Jaycee’s stepfather, became the target of communal anger and confusion as months and years passed with no end to the search.
“People were mean to her stepdad,” Ms. Gooch said. “They thought he was involved. Everyone boycotted him from everything. He used to do wallpaper jobs for people, but not after that.”
In Santa Rosa, Ms. Russell flipped through a scrapbook she had kept over the years with news clippings, fliers, wilted pink ribbons, and photographs of her with Jaycee. “I always thought of her,” she said. “It makes me sick to think that during those amazing moments, the milestones in your life, she was locked away somewhere.”
Ms. Russell added quietly, “I want to finish this book now, to end what I started when I was younger.”
On Sunday, the wood railings of her family’s old house were wrapped in pink ribbons, a symbol of her abduction. Along Lake Tahoe Boulevard, fronting the vast lake, pink bows and balloons festooned tree trunks, telephone poles, and the clothes of about 2,000 people gathered to march in honor of her being found.
Neither Ms. Dugard nor her family members attended, though they were aware of the event, said Erika Schulte, a spokesperson for the family. But the parade was not solely for them, said Karen Gillis-Tinlin, who was principal of Jaycee’s elementary school in 1991.
“There’s a sadness that this happened here,” Ms. Gillis-Tinlin said. “It changed Tahoe forever. Some of us want to connect with that.”
Angela Gooch, 30, owns a hair salon in this town of about 30,000. She grew up here and has friends in common with Jaycee.
“We’re a small community. Not one person who grew up here doesn’t know her name,” Ms. Gooch said of Jaycee. The case “ consumed us,” she said.
In the years right after Jaycee’s abduction, said Ms. Gooch, the missing girl was still a peer, a classmate in jeopardy just out of reach. But she remained frozen in time. As her case went cold, she said, “Jaycee” became as much an idea as a person. The pink ribbons that sprouted each year on bushes, backpacks and car antennas marked the fear that “changed things forever,” said Ms. Gooch, as much as they honored the Jaycee’s memory.
“As a kid, I would go into the forest with friends and we would try to find her,” said Ms. Gooch, adding, “Over the years, even as an adult, I always thought of her when I went hiking. But she was still little, and I had grown up.”
Stephanie Russell, 29, lived two blocks from Ms. Dugard and shared a school bus from 1990-1991. For almost a year, she said over the phone from Santa Rosa, Calif., they would spend most afternoons at each other’s homes, feeding the chickens that Jaycee kept under her porch, or playing games in the trees. “She was shy, and I was shy,” Ms. Russell said.
The week before her abduction, she said, Jaycee’s parents had conferred with hers and decided to allow the girls to walk alone and “meet in the middle” between their homes. “It was a huge moment,” said Ms. Russell. “I remember the excitement of seeing her walk toward me.”
Jaycee was snatched as she climbed the hill to her bus stop in June of 1991. A convicted sex offender, Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have been charged in the case. Jaycee was in the fifth grade, but her classmates carried her with them for years, said Ms. Gillis-Tinlin.
“They gave speeches about her at their high school graduation,” she said, “There was always that connection.”
The teenagers around town now were not born when Jaycee was taken said Duane Wallace, who ran an after school program at the time of the abduction; Jaycee attended “once or twice.” But they have heard about the girl who vanished.
“The kids around here,” said Mr. Wallace, at a football game Saturday, “never fully told their parents how much it terrified them. But I saw it change them. I saw how scared they were.”
Some of Jaycee’s classmates are raising their own children now. Most keep their daughters and sons close, said Ms. Gooch, whose daughter is 10, and use Jaycee as a cautionary tale.
The story, told repeatedly for almost two decades, includes monsters befitting a gothic fairytale. The police sketches of Nancy and Phillip Garrido — with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks — seeped into the nightmares of children here, Ms. Gooch said.
But some loathing was misplaced. Carl Probyn, Jaycee’s stepfather, became the target of communal anger and confusion as months and years passed with no end to the search.
“People were mean to her stepdad,” Ms. Gooch said. “They thought he was involved. Everyone boycotted him from everything. He used to do wallpaper jobs for people, but not after that.”
In Santa Rosa, Ms. Russell flipped through a scrapbook she had kept over the years with news clippings, fliers, wilted pink ribbons, and photographs of her with Jaycee. “I always thought of her,” she said. “It makes me sick to think that during those amazing moments, the milestones in your life, she was locked away somewhere.”
Ms. Russell added quietly, “I want to finish this book now, to end what I started when I was younger.”
kygirl09- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Re: JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA
kygirl09 on Sun Sep 06, 2009 8:15 pm
SAN FRANCISCO — Since her arrest on charges that she and her husband, Phillip, raped, kidnapped and imprisoned Jaycee Dugard, Nancy Garrido’s face has been seen only twice by the public. 
Nancy Garrido, 54, and her lawyer, Gilbert Maines, at her arraignment last month on kidnapping, rape and other charges.
The first was her mug shot, taken Aug. 26, showing a graying, birdlike woman with a vacant stare. The second was two days later when Ms. Garrido wept as she was arraigned on a raft of charges in front of a bank of television cameras.
Those two images — alternately impassive and emotional — seem to suggest contradictory sides of Ms. Garrido: a nursing assistant and caretaker accused of being a witness and a willing participant in rape and other lewd acts on a child; a seemingly subservient woman who nonetheless helped keep another woman captive; and a would-be mother figure who never had a child of her own.
“The people she worked with really liked her,” said Barbara Maizie, the executive director of Contra Costa Arc, a nonprofit group where Ms. Garrido worked, helping adults with developmental disabilities. “How could it be that this other situation was happening at the same time? It’s impossible to understand.”
While public records show a history of serious drug abuse, multiple sexual attacks and a conflict-filled upbringing for Mr. Garrido, 58, there are few clues to why Ms. Garrido might have done what she is accused of. Unlike her husband, who served 11 years in prison on a rape and kidnapping conviction before Ms. Dugard was abducted in 1991, Ms. Garrido has no criminal record evident in a wide search of law enforcement databases.
In televised interviews, Ms. Garrido’s lawyer, Gilbert Maines, seemed to suggest that his client may have been under the control — emotionally or mentally — of her husband, who law enforcement officials say fathered two daughters with Ms. Dugard.
“The crux of the matter or the argument I think goes to maybe her mental condition at the time and not so much what physically happened,” Mr. Maines said, describing Ms. Garrido as lost, distraught and scared. But, he added, “I don’t know that I can argue successfully that she didn’t know what was going on.”
To those who encountered her, Ms. Garrido seemed to be a meek and sometimes disheveled woman who helped care for Mr. Garrido’s mother, who suffered from dementia. Clients of the Garridos’ printing business said Ms. Garrido usually stayed in the background even as Mr. Garrido made deliveries and ran errands.
“Someone would be in the car,” said Cheyvonne Molino, who used the Garridos’ printing service for the wrecking business she runs with her husband. “I didn’t know her name.”
Whether she was always so reserved is not clear. Ms. Garrido, 54, was born in Texas as Nancy Bocanegra, the second child of a family of five or six children, according to public record databases. As a young woman, she spent time in Colorado, where some of her siblings still live, before crossing paths with Mr. Garrido in an unlikely environment to meet a future husband: the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan.
Gail Powell, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said Nancy Bocanegra was visiting an incarcerated uncle when she met Mr. Garrido, a tall, lanky and deep-eyed sex offender who was serving a 50-year sentence for the 1976 rape and kidnapping of a casino worker from South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
The two corresponded, and they married in 1981. The marriage was the first for Ms. Garrido, the second for Mr. Garrido.
It seems likely that Ms. Garrido knew all too well of her new husband’s sexual history and proclivities. In addition to his rape and kidnapping conviction, Mr. Garrido had also been arrested in a 1972 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Antioch, Calif., the Bay Area suburb near where he had grown up and where he and Ms. Garrido would settle with his mother after his release from prison in 1988.
His troubles with drugs were also well known. A psychiatric evaluation as part of his kidnapping and rape trial described Mr. Garrido as having “considerable emotional conflict” in his upbringing and said he had abused cocaine, alcohol and marijuana. He had taken daily doses of LSD from 1970 to 1974, the report said, and had become increasingly religious, something echoed in his later assertions that he could speak “the tongue of angels.”
“He went nuts,” said Manuel Garrido, Mr. Garrido’s father, who in an interview with The Daily Mail of London partly blamed his son’s drug abuse for his crimes.
After her prison wedding, Ms. Garrido apparently began working steadily in nursing and social services, Ms. Maizie said, citing Ms. Garrido’s résumé.
Eight months after Mr. Garrido was released on parole in August 1988, Ms. Garrido was certified as a nursing assistant in California, receiving classroom and clinical training, said Ken August, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.
But the authorities say that image of normalcy soon belied a dark and violent secret. In June 1991, the authorities say, the Garridos grabbed Ms. Dugard — a blond, blue-eyed 11-year-old — off a South Lake Tahoe street, and, according to the criminal complaint, both raped her. Ms. Dugard was then taken to the Antioch home, the authorities said, and imprisoned until her rescue last month.
In 1993, Mr. Garrido returned to prison for 38 days after an unspecified parole violation, putting Ms. Garrido in charge of the household and, the authorities say, Ms. Dugard’s captivity.
Judging from the complaint, “Mrs. Garrido was effectively watching over Jaycee during the time that Mr. Garrido was reincarcerated,” said McGregor Scott, a former United States attorney and the acting spokesman for the El Dorado County district attorney’s office, which is handling the criminal case.
In late 1993 or 1994, after Mr. Garrido’s release, Ms. Dugard gave birth to a baby girl, apparently in the Garrido home. Ms. Garrido’s training as nursing assistant has led to speculation that she may have delivered that child, though Mr. August said she was not trained to do so. But, he said, there is no record of either of Ms. Dugard’s children being born at a hospital.
Ms. Garrido starting working at Contra Costa Arc in 1994, Ms. Maizie said, and was known around the office to be “kind and caring.” In 1998, about the time Ms. Dugard’s second child was born, Ms. Garrido suddenly quit her job. “She did not give a reason,” Ms. Maizie said.
How Ms. Dugard and her children were treated is not clear. But Mr. Maines, Ms. Garrido’s lawyer, said Ms. Garrido had come to consider the life inside the house — and in the hidden backyard compound — as normal.
“What she said that I can tell you about is that there came a time when she felt like they were a family, and that she loves the girls very much and she loved Jaycee very much,” Mr. Maines said on the “Today” show on NBC. “And that seems a little strange given the circumstance. But that’s what she has said to me.”
Nancy Garrido, 54, and her lawyer, Gilbert Maines, at her arraignment last month on kidnapping, rape and other charges.
The first was her mug shot, taken Aug. 26, showing a graying, birdlike woman with a vacant stare. The second was two days later when Ms. Garrido wept as she was arraigned on a raft of charges in front of a bank of television cameras.
Those two images — alternately impassive and emotional — seem to suggest contradictory sides of Ms. Garrido: a nursing assistant and caretaker accused of being a witness and a willing participant in rape and other lewd acts on a child; a seemingly subservient woman who nonetheless helped keep another woman captive; and a would-be mother figure who never had a child of her own.
“The people she worked with really liked her,” said Barbara Maizie, the executive director of Contra Costa Arc, a nonprofit group where Ms. Garrido worked, helping adults with developmental disabilities. “How could it be that this other situation was happening at the same time? It’s impossible to understand.”
While public records show a history of serious drug abuse, multiple sexual attacks and a conflict-filled upbringing for Mr. Garrido, 58, there are few clues to why Ms. Garrido might have done what she is accused of. Unlike her husband, who served 11 years in prison on a rape and kidnapping conviction before Ms. Dugard was abducted in 1991, Ms. Garrido has no criminal record evident in a wide search of law enforcement databases.
In televised interviews, Ms. Garrido’s lawyer, Gilbert Maines, seemed to suggest that his client may have been under the control — emotionally or mentally — of her husband, who law enforcement officials say fathered two daughters with Ms. Dugard.
“The crux of the matter or the argument I think goes to maybe her mental condition at the time and not so much what physically happened,” Mr. Maines said, describing Ms. Garrido as lost, distraught and scared. But, he added, “I don’t know that I can argue successfully that she didn’t know what was going on.”
To those who encountered her, Ms. Garrido seemed to be a meek and sometimes disheveled woman who helped care for Mr. Garrido’s mother, who suffered from dementia. Clients of the Garridos’ printing business said Ms. Garrido usually stayed in the background even as Mr. Garrido made deliveries and ran errands.
“Someone would be in the car,” said Cheyvonne Molino, who used the Garridos’ printing service for the wrecking business she runs with her husband. “I didn’t know her name.”
Whether she was always so reserved is not clear. Ms. Garrido, 54, was born in Texas as Nancy Bocanegra, the second child of a family of five or six children, according to public record databases. As a young woman, she spent time in Colorado, where some of her siblings still live, before crossing paths with Mr. Garrido in an unlikely environment to meet a future husband: the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan.
Gail Powell, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Public Safety, said Nancy Bocanegra was visiting an incarcerated uncle when she met Mr. Garrido, a tall, lanky and deep-eyed sex offender who was serving a 50-year sentence for the 1976 rape and kidnapping of a casino worker from South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
The two corresponded, and they married in 1981. The marriage was the first for Ms. Garrido, the second for Mr. Garrido.
It seems likely that Ms. Garrido knew all too well of her new husband’s sexual history and proclivities. In addition to his rape and kidnapping conviction, Mr. Garrido had also been arrested in a 1972 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Antioch, Calif., the Bay Area suburb near where he had grown up and where he and Ms. Garrido would settle with his mother after his release from prison in 1988.
His troubles with drugs were also well known. A psychiatric evaluation as part of his kidnapping and rape trial described Mr. Garrido as having “considerable emotional conflict” in his upbringing and said he had abused cocaine, alcohol and marijuana. He had taken daily doses of LSD from 1970 to 1974, the report said, and had become increasingly religious, something echoed in his later assertions that he could speak “the tongue of angels.”
“He went nuts,” said Manuel Garrido, Mr. Garrido’s father, who in an interview with The Daily Mail of London partly blamed his son’s drug abuse for his crimes.
After her prison wedding, Ms. Garrido apparently began working steadily in nursing and social services, Ms. Maizie said, citing Ms. Garrido’s résumé.
Eight months after Mr. Garrido was released on parole in August 1988, Ms. Garrido was certified as a nursing assistant in California, receiving classroom and clinical training, said Ken August, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health.
But the authorities say that image of normalcy soon belied a dark and violent secret. In June 1991, the authorities say, the Garridos grabbed Ms. Dugard — a blond, blue-eyed 11-year-old — off a South Lake Tahoe street, and, according to the criminal complaint, both raped her. Ms. Dugard was then taken to the Antioch home, the authorities said, and imprisoned until her rescue last month.
In 1993, Mr. Garrido returned to prison for 38 days after an unspecified parole violation, putting Ms. Garrido in charge of the household and, the authorities say, Ms. Dugard’s captivity.
Judging from the complaint, “Mrs. Garrido was effectively watching over Jaycee during the time that Mr. Garrido was reincarcerated,” said McGregor Scott, a former United States attorney and the acting spokesman for the El Dorado County district attorney’s office, which is handling the criminal case.
In late 1993 or 1994, after Mr. Garrido’s release, Ms. Dugard gave birth to a baby girl, apparently in the Garrido home. Ms. Garrido’s training as nursing assistant has led to speculation that she may have delivered that child, though Mr. August said she was not trained to do so. But, he said, there is no record of either of Ms. Dugard’s children being born at a hospital.
Ms. Garrido starting working at Contra Costa Arc in 1994, Ms. Maizie said, and was known around the office to be “kind and caring.” In 1998, about the time Ms. Dugard’s second child was born, Ms. Garrido suddenly quit her job. “She did not give a reason,” Ms. Maizie said.
How Ms. Dugard and her children were treated is not clear. But Mr. Maines, Ms. Garrido’s lawyer, said Ms. Garrido had come to consider the life inside the house — and in the hidden backyard compound — as normal.
“What she said that I can tell you about is that there came a time when she felt like they were a family, and that she loves the girls very much and she loved Jaycee very much,” Mr. Maines said on the “Today” show on NBC. “And that seems a little strange given the circumstance. But that’s what she has said to me.”
kygirl09- Supreme Commander of the Universe With Cape AND Tights AND Fancy Headgear
Page 2 of 4 • 1, 2, 3, 4
Permissions of this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum