JAYCEE DUGARD - 11 yo (1991) - Lake Tahoe CA

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: June 10, 1991 from South Lake Tahoe, California
Classification: Non-Family Abduction
Date Of Birth: May 3, 1980
Age: 11 years old
Height and Weight: 4'6, 80 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue
eyes. Dugard had a gap between her upper front teeth at the time of her
1991 disappearance. She has a chicken pox scar between her eyes, a
brown butterfly-shaped birthmark on her right arm below her elbow, and
moles on her back.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A pink windbreaker, pink stretch pants, a white t-shirt and white canvas sneakers.




Details of Disappearance

Dugard was last seen walking to her school bus stop on Washoan
Boulevard in her hometown of South Lake Tahoe, California on June 10,
1991. A gray two-tone 1980 mid-sized Ford or Mercury sedan, possibly a
Ford Grenada, Mercury Monarch or Mercury Zephyr, made a u-turn on the
street where Dugard was walking between 8:05 and 8:15 a.m. An
unidentified man and woman were inside the vehicle. The woman grabbed
Dugard and forced her inside the car, then the vehicle sped from the
scene. Dugard's stepfather heard her scream and witnessed the abduction
from inside their house and proceeded to chase the vehicle while riding
a bicycle, but the suspects were able to escape. Dugard has never been
seen or heard from again. She was only about 150 yards away from her
home when she was abducted.
Sketches of the female suspect in Dugard's abduction are posted below
this case summary, along with a sketch of the vehicle. The woman is
described as having long black hair and a dark complexion. The suspect
was approximately 32 years old in 1991 and stood five feet, five inches
tall.
Investigators believe Dugard may have been taken across the state line
into Nevada after her abduction. There was also a sighting of her in
Fallen Leaf, California, about three miles from where she was taken.
Dugard's biological father was quickly ruled out as a suspect; at the
time of her abduction, he did not even know where she was living.
James Anthony Daveggio has been considered as a possible suspect in
Dugard's abduction since the early 1990s. He and his former girlfriend,
Michelle Lyn Michaud, were charged with the 1997 abduction, rape and
murder of Vanessa Lei Swanson. Swanson's remains were discovered
approximately five miles from the site of Dugard's 1991 abduction.
Photos of Daveggio and Michaud are posted below this case summary. They
were also charged with additional counts of sexual assault in unrelated
cases in the mid-1990s. In 2002, Michaud and Daveggio were convicted of
Swanson's murder and sentenced to death. They are awaiting execution.
Michaud claims that she met Daveggio in 1996 and therefore was not
involved in Dugard's abduction. There are striking similarities between
Michaud and the female suspect in Dugard's case. However, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has created a timeline tracing Michaud
and Daveggio's whereabouts over the 1980s and 1990s and they say the
pair could not have abducted Dugard.
Daveggio is also considered a possible suspect in the disappearances of
Amber Swartz-Garcia, Michaela Garecht and Ilene Misheloff. Neither he
nor Michaud has been charged in connection with any of the
disappearances.
A defrocked priest named Stephen Kiesle became a suspect in Dugard's
abduction in mid-2002. He was suspected because has since been arrested
and charged with molesting three girls at the Santa Paula Catholic
Church in Fremont, where he worked from 1968 to 1971. Kiesle did not
know Dugard and denies any involvement in her case. Police searched his
yard three times, using cadaver-sniffing dogs, radar, and a backhoe.
They were looking not only for evidence in Dugard's disappearance but
also evidence in the 1989 kidnapping of Amber Swartz-Garcia. They found
no clues pertaining to either case and the searches concluded in July
2002.
Authorities have also investigated the possibility that Brian David
Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, abducted Dugard. Photographs of
Mitchell and Barzee are posted below this case summary. They are
charged with the abduction and sexual assault of fourteen-year-old
Elizabeth Smart of Salt Lake City, Utah. Smart was kidnapped from her
bedroom in June 2002 and held captive for nine months before being
rescued in March 2003. Mitchell, also known as David Emmanuel Isiah,
has bizarre religious beliefs and reportedly thought God told him to
make Smart his wife.
The police are investigating similarities between Smart's and Dugard's
cases. The two victims physically resemble each other, and Dugard's
stepfather says Barzee resembles the woman he saw abduct Dugard.
Mitchell and Barzee have not been charged in connection to Dugard's
abduction, however, and authorities are not certain if either was
involved.
Dugard remains missing. Pink was her favorite color at the time she disappeared.

An El Dorado County Sheriff's Department source confirmed late Wednesday that their detectives were actively pursuing a possible
lead into the disappearance of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was believed
abducted from outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991.
An FBI source in Concord also confirmed that agency's involvement in
the case Wednesday night, but would not comment on any details of the
investigation.

The El Dorado County Sheriff's Department was planning to
hold a news conference Thursday to discuss the case, according to El
Dorado County Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Bryan Golmitz.

Age progressed to 24

Dugard was last seen just 150 yards away from her home as
she walked to her bus stop in South Lake Tahoe around 8:05 a.m. on June
10, 1991.

Dugard's stepfather Carl Probyn said
from inside his home, he saw a man and a woman in a two-tone gray,
late-model sedan make a U-turn on Washeon Boulevard, then saw the woman
in the car grab the girl and pull her inside.
Investigators at the time believed Dugard may have been taken across
state lines into Nevada after her abduction. Despite at least one
alleged sighting immediately following her disappearance, Dugard was
not seen again.

The stepfather of missing 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard told KCRA
Wednesday his wife is 90 percent sure that a woman in the Bay area will
be positively identified as Jaycee.Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted in Meyers near South Lake Tahoe in 1991.

FBI Jaycee Lee Dugard, 11, was abducted in Meyers near South Lake Tahoe in 1991.

Her father said he saw people in a car kidnap the girl as she walked to her school bus. She was never seen again.Officials said detectives in the case are following up on leads in the Bay area.KCRA
spoke via phone with Jaycee's stepfather, Carl Probyn, in the newsroom.
Probyn said his wife spoke with a woman who claims to be Dugard and
said his wife is 90 percent sure she will be positively identified.Jaycee's mother, Terry Probyn, who currently lives in southern California, is headed north to meet with investigators.
"I can't even sleep," Probyn said. "I'm anxious to find out where she's
been and what she's been doing. I'll get answers tomorrow."Probyn said he hopes that this is Jaycee."I'm just really thrilled this is coming to an end and excited to find who did this and solve this case," Probyn said.The El Dorado County Sheriff's Department will hold a news conference sometime Thursday to talk about the case.

A young woman surfaced claiming to be
a missing girl who was kidnapped 18 years ago from a school bus stop,
and police in Concord, Calif., say they're "very confident" that her
story is true.
Authorities have two people in custody and are reportedly searching the home of a
registered sex offender after a woman came forward identifying herself
as Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted in 1991.
Jaycee was taken from a bus stop when she was 11 years old, minutes after she left her South Lake Tahoe home.
"We're 99 percent sure it's her," said Lt. Les Lovell of the El Dorado
Sheriff's Department. He said DNA tests were being conducted. The woman
is in good health, but it was not immediately clear when she came in to
the station.
Lovell said two people were arrested on suspicion of kidnapping.
A home being searched by Antioch, Calif., police as part of the investigation has the same address as that of
registered sex offender Phillip Garrido. Garrido has not been confirmed
to be one of the two in custody, according to the station.
Lovell said Concord police did an investigation after the woman surfaced, and
he received a call Wednesday from investigators who tentatively
identified her as Dugard.
"Her family has been contacted and they are in the process of arranging" a meeting,
said Lovell, who was a detective assigned to help investigate the
kidnapping in 1991. "We are very confident at this point in time that
it is her."
Jimmie Lee, a spokesman for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department, said FBI and El Dorado
sheriff's deputies arrested two suspects Wednesday night. They were
being held in the Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez.
Lee said the two were being held for investigation of several charges, including kidnapping, but he could not elaborate.
Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, said the news was like winning the lottery.
"To have this happen where we get her back alive, and where she remembers
things from the past, and to have people in custody is a triple win,"
he told The Sacramento Bee.
Jaycee left for school the morning of June 10, 1991, dressed all in pink and stood
at the bus stop two blocks from her house. As her stepfather watched
from the driveway, a gray car with two people inside pulled up, grabbed
the child and sped away, according to witnesses.
In media reports at the time, the girl's stepfather said he heard Jaycee
scream then jumped on a bicycle and frantically pedaled after the car
in a failed effort to follow it up a hill. He then turned around and
shouted at neighbors to call the police.
The case attracted national attention and was featured on TV's "America's
Most Wanted," which broadcast a composite drawing of a suspect seen in
the car.
Probyn said his wife, Terry, spoke with Dugard by phone on Wednesday.
"She got a call from the FBI, they said they had found Jaycee and she was
alive," Probyn told KTVU. "My wife talked with her and is convinced she
is Jaycee. Jaycee remembers everything."
He said the mother and their 19-year-old daughter were flying from their
Southern California home to meet with Dugard in Northern California.
Investigators first visited with his wife about three weeks ago, he said.
Probyn said he endured years of suspicion from FBI agents who believed he may
have been involved in the abduction. He eventually lost hope that he
would ever see his stepdaughter alive again.
"Then you pray that you get her body back so there is an ending," Probyn said.
Lovell said investigators have been working the case consistently since she was abducted and new leads had surfaced over time.
"You bet it's a surprise. This is not the normal resolution to a kidnapping," he said.
The sheriff's department scheduled a news conference to discuss the case later Thursday.
"After 18 years, you do give up hope," Probyn told KTVU. "This is a miracle."

A 29-year-old woman abducted from South Lake Tahoe, Calif., as a child 18 years
ago has been found, and a man and woman have been arrested in connection with
the case, authorities said today.
After speaking with police hours earlier on an unrelated matter, Jaycee Dugard walked
into the office of the Concord, Calif., Police Department on Wednesday,
about 200 miles from where she was abducted, Lt. Les Lovell of the
El Dorado County Sheriff's Department told The Times.

[Updated, 12:30 p.m.: Authorities arrested Phillip
Garrido, a registered sex offender, and his wife, Nancy Garrido of
Antioch on Wednesday night in connection with the case, said Jimmy Lee,
spokesperson for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department.

Garrido, 58, is listed on the state's Megan's Law sex offender website as being convicted of rape.

Concord police officers first encountered Dugard at a nearby house
on Wednesday while they were conducting a separate investigation,
Lovell said. Police began to question the woman and something didn’t
add up, he said.

"Based on really good police work, the Concord
police smelled a rat," Lovell said. Police continued to press the
woman, and she eventually revealed her name was Jaycee Dugard.

Officers asked her to come to the Police Department for further investigation and Dugard cooperated, Lovell said.

Police are awaiting the results of a DNA test to confirm Dugard's identity, he said.

Dugard's mother, Terry Probyn, has been in contact with her
daughter, Lovell said. "They have discussed things that only the two of
them would know," Lovell said. "We are about 99% sure the woman is her."

Lovell was one of he original investigators assigned to the Dugard
case. "It's a great feeling that she is alive," he said. "We followed
up on hundreds, if not thousands, of leads. And out of the blue, this
one came to us yesterday."]

Details about the last 18 years of Dugard's life are still
unclear.
Dugard was 11 when she was abducted on June 10, 1991, as she walked to
a school bus stop on a quiet cul-de-sac in Meyers, Calif., in El Dorado
County, authorities said at the time.

As Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, watched from the family garage 200
yards away, a late-model gray car -- with a man and a second person,
believed to be a woman, inside -- stopped abruptly in front of the
girl. Jaycee was swept into the sedan, authorities said.

Probyn gave chase on a bicycle but the car sped off. "There was nothing I could do," he recalled.Despite
a massive search, local outrage and being featured on the "America's
Most Wanted" television program, Dugard was not found. Investigators
were unable to identify a suspect.
[Updated at 12:50 p.m.: Carl Probyn, Dugard's
stepfather, was calling friends with the news that his stepdaughter had
been found, said Phillip Oster, a close friend of 15 years. "This
is a really big event in his life," Oster said. "A mutual friend called
me and said that Carl was crying like a little baby. He was so happy." Probyn,
who owns his own wallpaper company, has been living in Orange. Oster
said Probyn left him a message last night, sounding happy but serious
about the news. Oster said Probyn didn't always talk about his
stepdaugher's abduction. "He didn't wear it on his sleeve but it was
something that dented him," Oster said.

After being imprisoned as a sex slave for almost two decades and forced to
bear the children of her captor Jaycee Lee Dugard had one thing to say as
she was reunited with her family today: “I’m sorry”.

“She is very remorseful,” said her stepfather, Carl Probyn. “She feels really
guilty for bonding with this man. There’s really a guilt trip here.”

America was shocked by the abduction of Jaycee, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed
11-year-old girl wearing a pink top and pink trousers from a bus stop
outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991. But in spite of intense press
interest, the case went cold.

The next time anyone heard from her was on Wednesday this week, 18 years after
she was snatched, when she turned up at a parole office in the town of
Concord, California, under bizarre circumstances.Accompanying Jaycee was her suspected kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, 58, his
wife, Nancy, 55, and two children.

According to various witnesses, Jaycee was in good health but uneducated, and
looked barely older than when she disappeared. “She looks almost like when
she was kidnapped,” said Mr Probyn, whose wife and daughter were spending
their first full day with Jaycee today since her disappearance.

“She looks very young. She doesn’t look 29 at all.” Her good health comes in
spite of giving birth to two of her captor’s children in the back-garden
compound of outhouses and makeshift tents where she spent all her teenage
years and most of her twenties. The first child was born in 1994, when
Jaycee was only 14.

“I have babies,” was the first thing Jaycee told her mother, Terry Probyn,
when they were reunited.

It has emerged that Jaycee owes her freedom to an unnamed female campus
security officer at the University of California Berkeley who suspected
there was just something not quite right with Phillip Garrido, a former
business card printer who had given up his day job to found his own
“church”, named God’s Desire.

He was convinced he could control sound waves with his mind — a possible
side-effect of his experiments with LSD in the 1970's. His crazed blog
entries have since emerged, the most recent of which declared that, “the
Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order
to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the
entire world”.

Many of his former business card customers simply felt sorry for him,
describing his demeanor as “kind of nutty” but “happy-go-lucky”. His own
brother was less charitable, calling him “a fruitcake”.

But when Garrido went to the campus of UC Berkeley on Tuesday morning to
distribute propaganda for his church — he’d made the leaflets himself — he
was accompanied by two glazed-eyed girls, aged 11 and 15 respectively, and a
woman in her late twenties, supposedly named Allissa.

None of them seemed to have even rudimentary social skills.

Garrido’s decision to take the girls with him was a fateful one. Within 24
hours, it would lead to the extraordinary conclusion of a child abduction
case that had transfixed America almost 20 years ago, and expose a sex crime
of horrifying cruelty.

After the campus security officer confronted him, asked for his name and ID,
and ran a background check she quickly discovered that he was on parole.
What she didn’t know is that he was a registered sex offender, having
kidnapped a woman from South Lake Tahoe in 1976, driven her to a warehouse
in Reno, Nevada, and raped her.

The case was a big story at the time, because Garrido and his victim had been
found by chance when a patrol officer decided to knock on the warehouse door
after seeing a car parked outside at 2.30am. When Garrido answered, the
kidnap victim screamed, and the astonished officer walked inside to find
rugs on the floor and walls, pornographic magazines scattered around the
place, a movie projector, sex toys, a theatrical spotlight, wine, and a tub
of hot water.

Of course, the Berkeley security officer had no way of knowing all those
details, but she felt compelled to call Garrido’s parole officer —
especially when she recalled that his two girls had refused to make
eye-contact with her. They also seemed unkempt and uneducated.

The parole officer was surprised to hear that Garrido had been found on the
campus with two girls: in spite of repeated visits to Garrido’s home in the
town of Antioch, California, about an hour northeast of San Francisco, the
officer had never seen any evidence of children.

He ordered Garrido to report to his office in Concord, a short drive from
Antioch. It isn’t known if he was also ordered to bring the girls, but he
took them to the meeting the next day, along with Allissa and his wife,
Nancy, whom he’d met in prison. Mrs Garrido was the visiting niece of
another prisoner.

During questioning, the true identity of Allissa emerged. She was Jaycee Lee
Dugard, abducted as her stepfather watched helplessly from his driveway two
blocks away. Police believe that her visit to Berkeley was her fist time out
of captivity in 18 years.

Somehow, the authorities had never suspected that Garrido, who had kidnapped a
woman before from the same town, 15 years earlier might strike again. It is
now believed that he kept Jaycee as a slave in a hidden compound in his back
garden, concealed by rubbish bins, tall trees, and sheets of tarpaulin.

By the time she was was 14, he had impregnated her. She gave birth to another
child four years later.

Helping Garrido was the fact that he was living with his mother, who has
apparently been suffering from dementia for the past eight years. He also
appears to have had the help of his wife, Nancy, who was described by
Garrido’s brother today as “a robot” who would “do anything he asked her
to”.

A Northern California couple have
pleaded not guilty in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a girl who
was abducted when she was 11 years old and held captive for 18 years.Phillip and Nancy Garrido were arraigned Friday on 29 counts, including forcible abduction, rape and false imprisonment.They both entered their pleas in El Dorado Superior Court, and a judge ordered them held without bail.Phillip
Garrido appeared stoic and unresponsive during the brief hearing. His
wife cried and put her head in her hands several times.Jaycee
Lee Dugard was snatched outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991.
Authorities say she gave birth to two children by Phillip Garrido while
she was held in a secret encampment in his Antioch backyard.
* * * *

Authorities are searching the home
where a man allegedly held a kidnapped girl captive for 18 years,
looking for evidence in the murders of several prostitutes.Contra
Costa Sheriff's Department Capt. Daniel Terry says police officers from
the nearby city of Pittsburg executed a search warrant Friday at
Phillip Garrido's Antioch home for clues in the unsolved slayings.Several of the murdered women's bodies were dumped near an industrial park where Garrido worked during the 1990s.Garrido
and his wife, Nancy, were charged Friday with kidnapping 11-year-old
Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991. Authorities say they held her and two
children she had with Garrido as prisoners in a backyard encampment.
* * * *

The father of a man suspected of
kidnapping a girl 18 years ago and hiding her in his backyard says his
son is "absolutely out of his mind."Manuel
Garrido told The Associated Press Friday that his son Phillip Garrido
fell into a bad crowd when he was younger and started taking LSD.The elder Garrido said the drugs changed him from a good boy, whom everybody loved, to a crazy person.Speaking
by phone from his house in Brentwood, Manuel Garrido says he hasn't
seen his son in years and has never been to the house where Phillip
Garrido allegedly lived with the missing girl Jaycee Lee Dugard, their
two children and his wife, Nancy Garrido.Phillip
and Nancy Garrido are being held for investigation of kidnapping and
conspiracy. Phillip Garrido also has been accused of various sex crimes.
* * * *

The family of a woman who police say was held captive by her kidnapper for 18 years is sorting through some mixed feelings.Jaycee
Dugard was reunited with her mother and other relatives yesterday. Her
stepfather, Carl Probyn, spoke to his wife afterward and says everyone
is "doing great."Appearing
on several morning news shows, Probyn said the most surprising thing to
his wife was that her daughter, now 29, looks very young, almost like
she did when she taken at age 11.]But
he says Dugard feels terribly guilty for bonding with her captor, and
her family is troubled by learning the facts of how she was forced to
live.Police
say her abductor kept Dugard hidden behind a series of fences, sheds
and tents in his backyard, and fathered two children with her. The
children, now 11 and 15, were also kept there.The
stepfather had long been considered a suspect. And he blames the
kidnapping, which he witnessed, for ruining his marriage. He and
Dugard's mother are separated.A convicted sex offender and his wife have been arrested in connection with the case.

Jaycee Dugard, the woman who was abducted at the age of 11 in 1991,
was recently discovered living in a virtual prison in the back yard of
a couple's come in Antioch, Calif., as has been widely reported. She
had been there for 18 years, confined and horrifically abused, even
giving birth to her rapist's children. They were kept prisoner and
isolated, never having attended school or seen a doctor.

Amazingly, a Reno psychic is now claiming the case proves the accuracy of her abilities.

Dayle Schear, who was paid by Jaycee's parents to help locate their
daughter, says she told Jaycee's mother not to give up searching for
her daughter: "I looked her in the eyes and I said... eventually she'll
walk through the door, you're going to see her again."

Schear also claims that she correctly described the general area
where Jaycee was being held. The psychic's "information" is typical of
what happens when missing persons are eventually found, dead or alive.
Psychics come forward years later after the person was found to make
retroactive claims about how they "knew" certain pieces of information.

Yet the psychics conveniently ignore the fact that their information was either wrong or so general
and vague that it was useless. If Shear's psychic powers told her that
this poor girl was being kept in the most horrific conditions — being
subjected to continual sexual and physical abuse for nearly two decades
— then it's puzzling that Jaycee was not found 18 years ago.

What police and searchers need is not general, vague "I told you so"
information after the missing person has been recovered through police
work, but accurate, useful information that leads police to the victim.

One common trick psychics use to make themselves appear accurate is
to give very vague information open to later interpretation (most
missing persons are likely to be found "near water," even if it's a
lake, puddle, river, drain, etc.). When bodies are found it is always
through accident or police work.
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there is not a single
documented case of a missing person being found or recovered due solely
to psychic information. In February 2004, Court TV launched a series
about psychic detectives investigating cold cases "Haunting Evidence."
The show was cancelled after three seasons, without having solved a
single case.

The fact of the matter is that right now — as you are reading these
words — it is virtually certain that somewhere in the world, one or
more children are being held in exactly the same unimaginable
conditions as Jaycee. Some may die in captivity and be disposed of like
trash; others will eventually be freed after untold physical and
psychological damage.

Yet there are thousands of self-proclaimed psychics and psychic
detectives in the world who claim to be able to find missing persons.
Some are rich and famous, such as Sylvia Browne, Allison DuBois
(inspiration for the NBC show "Medium"), Noreen Renier, and Carla
Baron; others are known only locally. If they have the powers they
claim, perhaps they should take a break from their TV appearances and
lucrative lecture circuits to actually help find these and other
desperate missing persons.

When
14-year-old Victoria Gardner emotionally collapsed after being abducted
and raped in 1968, the only remedy doctors in San Jose offered was a
series of electro-shock treatments to help her forget her horrible
experience. She turned them down.Four decades later, Jaycee
Dugard, the Antioch woman abducted 18 years ago and freed this week,
will have more psychological help to deal with her trauma, thanks to
significant advances in the therapy field known as "recovery and
reunification.''Already, a Bay Area counselor who works with the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has been tapped to
help Dugard and her family through the first few days of the unexpected
and long-delayed reunion.But experts — and families with similar
experiences — say it will take many years of crucial professional
support to cope with victims' issues, from anger at parents for failing
to keep them safe to ambivalence about their abductors. Often there's
even guilt for being too paralyzed with fear to run away.
Stages of recovery
"Today,
there's a lot more help, but still, the fears and nightmares will
come,'' said Gardner, who remains troubled — 41 years later — about her
ordeal at the hands of a physician inside a San Jose hospital over a
three-day period. Dugard was gone for nearly two decades, and experts say she can look forward to the first stage of her recovery/reunification
— which is likely to be euphoria. "There's
a honeymoon period, a sense of wild joy, like your best dream has come
true,'' said Georgia Hilgeman-Hammond, who founded the Vanished
Children's Alliance in San Jose in 1976 after her 13-month-old daughter
was abducted. Her daughter was found four years later."But it's
not 'happily ever after,' '' she said. "You find out they're not the
same person. There's confusion, loyalty issues, like 'why didn't mom or
dad find me sooner.' "Dugard was 11 when she was snatched near
her home near South Lake Tahoe in 1991. Thursday, she surfaced with the
convicted sex offender who police say took her all those years ago, and
forced her to live in a shed and tents in Antioch and bear him two
daughters.Even though Dugard is 29 now, with the two girls, 11
and 15, fathered by her abductor, Philip Garrido, her emotional age is
likely to be much younger because she has been utterly powerless for so
long, experts say. The sudden freedom can be overwhelming,
according to research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Families should not expect their rescued children to be able to cope
with socializing right away, including everything from welcome home
celebrations to big family reunions.
'Brainwashing'
Recovered
victims are more likely to act withdrawn or hostile, probably because
they're scared of being re-abducted. Parents also are urged not to
criticize abductors in front of victims because the victims often bond
with their captors and are ambivalent about them."They've been
through kind of a brainwashing,'' said Ernie Allen, president of the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "They've been
brutalized and told they would be killed and their families would be
killed. The human instinct is to do whatever it takes to prevent
getting killed, including not trying to run away.''Gardner said she understands that self-preservation instinct. "No one understands what Jaycee is going through unless they've been a victim," she said. "The fear is so immobilizing.''In
1968 when a doctor kidnapped and raped her, she said, incidents like
that were rarely discussed publicly. "There was no mental health for
kids then,'' she said.Experts know so much more about the
psychology of these kinds of crimes because so many American children
are abducted — which the government defines as taken against their will
through physical force or threat for at least an hour. About 258,000
children are abducted in the United States every year, according to the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The vast
majority — about 200,000, are parental abductions. Most of the
remaining 58,000 abductions are resolved within 24 hours. Then
there are the so-called "stereotypical kidnappings'' like Jaycee's, in
which children are taken more than 50 miles away or taken overnight or
held for ransom or taken with the intent to keep permanently or kill.
There are only 115 of those a year. As expected, the recovery period is
not short. Abductees and their families can get help from state victim
compensation funds with considerable expense of long-term treatment."We preach patience,'' Allen said. "You don't take a shot or pill to get over this.''

Prison camp: A child's deckchair stands with two adult chairs in a
dusty yard beside a collection of pot plants. Empty cans, a vase and an
old saucepan lie discarded in front of a decrepit tent. Inside the tent
is evidence of a cat lover - a row of books about cats, several cat
toys and a 1,000-piece jigsaw entitled Cats



No place like home: A hand-made 'Welcome' sign hangs from a tree at the
rear of secret backyard where Jaycee Dugard and her daughters lived in
sheds, tents and outbuildings. The innocence of the scene is underlined
by three decorations, apparently a bell, a butterfly and a dove, under
the sign. The trees and shrubs helped to conceal the backyard from
neighbours


Chilling: One of the most ominous sights in the earth-floored compound
is an 8ft by 4ft wire cage, half draped with a tarpaulin. It is not
clear what use the cage might have been put to. Next to it is a crudely
built hut with white sliding doors with two black metal clasps which
suggest that it could be opened only from the outside. The hut was
largely empty

Chaos: The scene inside one of the dingy sheds. On the left is a
microwave oven, catfood in a plastic container and two hanging
vegetable baskets. The rest of the area seems to have been used as an
office. There are three old swivel chairs and a reading lamp on a small
table strewn with papers. The floor and shelves are covered in files,
boxes and bric-a-brac