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

Jaycee Dugard says abductors who held her captive 18 years stole her life

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jun 2, 2011 12:40PM



PLACERVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A California woman who was held captive for 18 years said her life was stolen by her abductors as she made her first public statement about the ordeal in an emotional declaration her mother read at the captors’ sentencing hearing Thursday.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido, both dressed in orange jumpsuits made no eye contact with anyone in the room and kept their heads down as Jaycee Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, read her daughter’s statement at the ongoing hearing, which Dugard did not attend.

“I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence,” Dugard wrote in a portion of the statement directed to Phillip Garrido. “Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that.”

“I hated every second of every day for 18 years,” she said. “You stole my life and that of my family.”

The two defendants pleaded guilty in April to kidnapping and raping Dugard, now 31, when she was 11. She was confined to a hidden backyard compound where she eventually lived with two daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido.

The plea deal calls for Phillip Garrido to receive a prison term of 431 years to life. He also pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts captured on video.

Nancy Garrido was sentenced to 36 years to life. Both have waived their right to appeal.

The deal was designed, in part, to spare Dugard and her children from having to testify at a trial.

In the statement, Dugard called Phillip Garrido a liar and said what Nancy Garrido did to her was evil. She said she hoped both of them would have as many sleepless nights as she had.

“There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions,” Dugard said in a portion of the statement directed to Nancy Garrido.

Dugard also said she was doing well now and told Phillip Garrido “you do not matter anymore.”

Dugard was given an opportunity to present El Dorado County Superior Judge Douglas Phimister with an oral or written statement about her experience. Prosecutors typically encourage crime victims and their families to prepare detailed victim impact statements so courts can factor their suffering into sentencing decisions.

Dugard, who has written a memoir set to be published next month, has strived to preserve her privacy in the 22 months since she was identified during a chance meeting with Phillip Garrido’s parole officer.

In a presentencing memo justifying a sentence of hundreds of years for Phillip Garrido, who was on parole for a 1976 rape and kidnapping when Dugard was taken, District Attorney Vern Pierson said that Dugard spent the first one-and-a-half years after her kidnapping locked in a backyard shed.

She did not leave the backyard for the first four years after her abduction.

“Phillip Garrido should have spent the rest of his life in prison for the crimes he committed in 1976. He never should have been allowed back on the street to even have the opportunity to commit the crimes he committed in this case,” Pierson said. Garrido “stole the childhood and innocence from an 11-year-old child.”

The Garridos and their defense lawyers also have an opportunity to address Judge Phimister, but attorney Susan Gellman, who represents Phillip Garrido, said he won’t have a statement.

Defendants often use sentencing hearings to express remorse or provide biographical information that could persuade a court to impose a lighter sentence.

Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido from the South Lake Tahoe street where her family lived and forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10, 1991. The abduction occurred as Dugard’s stepfather watched her walk to a school bus stop.

Authorities have said the couple drove the girl 168 miles south to their home in Antioch and held her prisoner there for the next 18 years, four months and 16 days. At first, she was locked in the shed then confined to a series of tents she would come to share with the daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido and delivered by his wife.

The defendants were arrested in August 2009 after Phillip Garrido inexplicably brought his ragtag clan to a meeting with his parole officer, who had no idea the convicted rapist had been living with a young woman and two girls he described as his nieces.

Dugard at first tried to conceal her identity, telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa, Garrido eventually acknowledged kidnapping her, and Dugard disclosed her identity.

Her reappearance proved a costly embarrassment for California parole officials, who had to explain how a parolee under intensive supervision could live with his victim and have children with her undetected.

The situation existed despite repeated surprise home visits and a woman telling sheriff’s deputies in 2006 that her sex offender neighbor was living with small children.

The state last year paid Dugard a $20 million settlement under which officials acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Garrido. California has since increased monitoring of sex offenders.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/5736535-418/jaycee-dugard-says-abductors-who-held-her-captive-18-years-stole-her-life.html

Garrido's Sentenced for Dugard Kidnapping, Jaycee Statement Read in Court


PLACERVILLE—

Nearly 20 years after abducting an 11-year-old girl from her street in South Lake Tahoe, Phillip and Nancy Garrido were sentenced for their crimes.
Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, and held captive for 18 years before she was discovered. The couple pleaded guilty in April.
Dugard’s aunt and mother read impact statements during Thursday’s sentencing hearing. Jaycee’s statement explained why she herself did not attend, “I chose not to be here because I don't want to waste another second in your presence”.
Nancy’s attorney, Stephen Tapson said Jaycee’s mom and aunt read a statement from Jaycee and her sister, who was only a young child when Jaycee was kidnapped. In the statement Dugard’s family called the Garrido’s some “awful things”.
According to Tapson, Nancy’s statement to the court and Dugard was remorseful, “Every time I look in the mirror I don’t like what I see … I can give you an explanation but they will sound like an excuse, and there is no excuse … “ for what she did. Tapson repeated Nancy’s position during the captivity as a mother-figure to Dugard; delivering her children and caring for them. Nancy was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison.
Phillip was sentenced to 431 years to life. He was eligible for around 590 years, but the judge decided to stay within the plea deal and sentenced Phillip to 431. During the nearly hour-long proceeding, the judge said Garrido was the “poster child for sexual predator” and he “redefined the word ‘slavery’”.
His lawyer, Susan Gellman said Phillip never, ever wanted to go to trial, “he did what he did today for her (Dugard),you know, he entered this plea for her so she wouldn’t have to go through a trial.” Gellman went on to say “He (Phillip) acknowledged his guilt, he admitted what he did was wrong, of course there is remorse.”
Phillip had a competency hearing earlier in the proceedings. Gellman said “Phillip never ever, ever wanted to go to trial. The only confusion he had, he had confusion about who witnesses would be and what the trial would be about, and that’s what the competency hearing was about. But he never wanted to go to trial.”
Katie Callaway Hall, who was raped Phillip Garrido in Reno in the 1970’s, attended Thursday’s sentencing. She did not attend the sentencing for her own case, where Phillip got sentenced to life. He only served 11 years of that sentence.
Hall was hoping to make a victim impact statement at the sentencing on the Dugard charges, but the El Dorado County Judge recently decided not to let her make a statement. She told the media outside the courtroom she hopes Phillip “rots in hell”.
Attorneys for Phillip and Nancy arrived at the El Dorado County courthouse in Placerville Thursday morning. Susan Gellman, who represents Phillip Garrido, shouted at the waiting media as she passed by, “My fifteen minutes are over people”; a reference to the intense media coverage this case has gotten.
Phillip Garrido was arrested for an unrelated crime in August 2009 in Berkeley. After more digging by detectives, Jaycee told officers who she was and that she had been kidnapped.
An investigation uncovered deplorable living conditions at the Garrido’s Antioch home, and a tent-room in the backyard where Jaycee and her two daughters were living. Investigators say the two daughters were fathered by Garrido.
Dugard was reunited with her family, and plans to release a biography of her experience later this summer called “A Stolen Life”.

http://www.wtvr.com/news/ktxl-garridos-sentenced-thursday-20110602,0,6966472.story

A newly
released report reads like a laundry list of oversights by agents
charged with monitoring Phillip Garrido's federal parole in the 1990s,
when he kidnapped and began his 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard.The
confidential review released Friday by James Ware, chief district judge
for the Bay Area, was meant to bring attention to improvements made in
monitoring parolees still under federal watch.Written in
December, it echoes a 2010 audit of Garrido's supervision by state
parole agents, outlining a general lack of close supervision of the now
imprisoned two-time kidnapper and rapist.Among the report's criticisms are that agents:

• Downplayed repeated drug violations and substituted therapists' assessments for their own
  
• Never made sure Garrido registered as a sex offender
  
• Kept such loose track of him that when after he started habituallyraping the captive Dugard in 1991, his parole check-ins were at the agents' office rather than his home near Antioch.
  

Garrido was the charge of federal officers between 1988, when he was released
from prison for the 1976 kidnapping and rape of a South Lake Tahoe
woman, and 1999, when his parole was transferred to the state.Other
complaints about Garrido made to agents include descriptions of him as a
"time bomb," and agents' lack of concern for the sex felon's
aspirations to sell water purifiers door-to-door.By the end of his federal parole term,
officials lauded Garrido as a model parolee, just as state agents did on
the four occasions they tried to release him from lifetime parole for the kidnapping.

The report says that while his federal
supervision was substandard, it does not mean agents working properly
would have found Dugard, noting that state agents and local police
visiting his home during the second decade of Garrido's parole also
missed the secret backyard compound Dugard was freed from in August
2009.Additionally, the report trumpets the adoption of specific
sex-offender policies in 2003, followed by the federal probation system
coming under new management, retraining officers, and hitting its
targets for routine home inspections.Last month, Phillip Garrido
began serving a sentence of 431 years to life in prison, while his wife,
Nancy Garrido, is serving 36 years to life.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_18442671?source=rss

Kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard, who gave birth to two children
during her 18 years in captivity, said she did what she had to do to
survive. During a wide-ranging interview with ABC News' Diane
Sawyer, set to air Sunday night, Dugard opened up about her experiences
at the hands of her captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Dugard
was just 11 years old when she was abducted in 1991 from the street in
front of her South Lake Tahoe, California, home. The Garridos held her
and her two children in a hidden compound of sheds and tarpaulins until
she was found in 2009. Dugard is now 31 and working to build a new life, one in which she and her children are finally free. "There's
a switch that I had to shut off," she told Sawyer, according to
excerpts posted on the network's website before the interview aired. "I
can't imagine being beaten to death, you know? And you can't imagine
being kidnapped and raped, you know? So, it's just, you just do what you
have to do to survive." Dugard recounted the first moment Phillip Garrido entered her life. She
was on her way to school, wearing her favorite shirt and a ring her
mother had given her, ABC reported, when all of a sudden Dugard felt
"tingly" and "numb." Phillip had shocked her with a stun gun, the
network said. The Garridos then put her in their car. She recalled
Phillip laughing at one point, and telling his wife: "I can't believe we
got away with it." "It was like the most horrible moment of your life times ten," Dugard told ABC. She also recalled the first time she gave birth, in the backyard, at just 14 years old. "I
didn't know I was in labor," Dugard said. "Then I saw her. She was
beautiful. I felt like I wasn't alone anymore. (I) had somebody that was
mine ... And I knew I could never let anything happen to her," she
said, wiping away tears. Throughout her 18-year ordeal, Dugard
managed to hold onto the ring her mother had given her and the hope that
she would one day be reunited with her family, ABC reported. "I
wanted to see her more than anything," she said about her mother. "I
would cry every day. (It was) hardest when I would think about her and
what she was doing and then -- trying to convince myself she was better
without me. "Worried I'd forget what she looked like, or what she sounded like. Would she forget me?" Her mother, Terry Probyn, also appeared in the ABC interview. Last
month, a judge sentenced Phillip Garrido to 431 years in prison after
he pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and 12 counts of sexual
assault. His wife Nancy Garrido got 36 years to life in prison for her
role in the crimes, including kidnapping and one count of rape by force.
The couple had pleaded guilty in late April in El Dorado Superior
Court. A statement from Dugard, read by her mother at the
sentencing hearing, called the Garridos "evil" and described her
kidnapping by them as a "sexual perversion." During the ABC interview, she stressed she is moving on with her life. Dugard said she wants to study writing, ABC reported. She spoke out just days before her memoir, "A Stolen Life," is scheduled to be released. The book is due in stores on Tuesday.
"I
don't feel like I have this rage inside of me that's building," Dugard
said. "I refuse to let him have that. He can't have me."


http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/10/dugard.abc.interview/

They were simple words but resonated loudly.


"My name is Jaycee Dugard, and I want to say that because for a
long time I wasn't able to say my name and so it feels good," the
soft-spoken woman told the crowd at an awards ceremony Friday night in
New York. "I am truly honored to be here tonight with these amazing
women who have done and been through so much more than me."




Dugard, 31, who had been kidnapped at age 11 and held prison for 18 years, appeared at her first public event since her ordeal.


She received the Inspiration Award at fashion
designer-philanthropist Diane von Furstenberg's DVF Awards held at the
United Nations honoring women for leadership, strength and courage to
transform the lives of other women.


Dugard, who had two children fathered by her kidnapper, got
emotional when she thanked her mother's unwavering support and faith.


"I have to say I felt her hope for many years and it gave me the
strength to go on and live," Dugard said. "And I did live. I have two
beautiful daughters who I love with all my heart."


Speaking about her JAYC Foundation that helps families
recovering from abduction, she closed her speech by urging people to
empower themselves by helping others.


"My hope is to be remembered for what I do, not to what happened to me," she said with a smile.


Before Dugard took to the stage, Winfrey – who received the
Lifetime Leadership award – said she had been eager to meet Dugard "to
tell her how much her story and her life meant to me."



Winfrey recounted Dugard's rape and abduction saying she has
"endured more than most have the capacity to even imagine" and praised
her grace and determination to survive, and most importantly, her desire
to help others in need.


"I am so proud of you," said Winfrey. "You are using your
courage and your strength and your power to show the world that you
care."

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20577607,00.html