Jaycee Lee Dugard pictures | Before the abduction (Photo: find-missing-children.org)

You’ve heard about the girl found after 18 years by now. Her name is Jaycee Lee Dugard, and photos of her as a child – before she was abducted – are all over the World Wide Web. The kidnapped girl is found; she had been abducted by Philip Garrido, the owner of a church called “God’s Desire” in Antioch, California.

It is frightening to contemplate what life must have been like for Jaycee Lee Dugard as she spent 18 years of her life in a shack in Philip Garrido’s back yard. His wife was aware this was going on and was a conspirator. While there, she bore two children to the sex offender. Now that Jaycee Lee Dugard is free, what will life be like for her children? They were born in that shack. This will be the first time they’re in the outside world. The two girls are 11 and 15 years old. They’ve never been to school or seen a doctor. I wish Jaycee Lee Dugard and her family the best during the difficult times ahead. As they adjust to the outside world, they will no doubt face tremendous challenges, both psychological and physical. I hope Jaycee will have the means to support herself and her daughters; her birth family may even be of help. If see finds herself in a short-term financial emergency somewhere down the road, she could choose faxless payday loans to help.

But first, Jaycee Lee Dugard goes to court

The Detroit Free Press reports (http://www.freep.com/article/20090828/NEWS07/90828007/1322/Hidden-away-18-years—woman-bore-kidnapper-s-children”) that Jaycee appears in court today to testify against her rapist jailor. Phillip Garrido, 58, is being held on kidnapping and sex charges. His wife Nancy Garrido has also been arrested. He was already a registered sex offender on federal parole for rape and kidnapping convictions. Yet parole agents who visited his home were unable to detect what was going on in his back yard.

A traumatic incident

When Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, her stepfather Carl Probyn saw it happen from a distance but was unable to intervene in time.

“As soon as I saw the door fly open, the driver’s door, I jumped on my mountain bike and I tried to get to the top of the hill but I had no energy,” Probyn remembers. “I rode back down and yelled at my neighbor, 911!”

The stress of her disappearance broke up his marriage to Jaycee’s mother, but both are overjoyed at the reappearance of daughter unseen in 18 years and grandchildren they’d never met. Thankfully, they appear to be in good physical health.

“He’s had her longer than we had her,” Probyn told ABC. “We had her for 11 years. He had her for 18.”

Leaflets and a camping shower

Philip Garrido had apparently indoctrinated Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters into his make-believe religion that seemed to be centered on his ideas that a higher power spoke to him through a box, and that said box granted him powers of telepathy. He took this so seriously that he distributed self-published “literature” and was building a compound for him to preach his psychotic gospel. That compound is where Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters were being kept. Neighbors admitted to hearing kids playing in the yard, but they never saw them. If only they’d gotten involved, perhaps this could have broken years ago.

If only

The compound had electricity, an outhouse and a camping shower, which made it easier for Philip Garrido to keep them locked away. I certainly hope he never used faxless payday loans to build that place. While it is obvious that Garrido abused Jaycee Lee Dugard, investigations are currently underway as to whether he did the same to Dugard’s daughters. In addition to the allegations of kidnapping, court records indicate both Philip Garrido and his wife are being held while investigation into whether they committed “rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and kidnapping someone under 14 with intent to rape” commence.

John Walsh helped spread word

Back when Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, the television program “America’s Most Wanted” publicized the incident to a wider audience. Unfortunately, Philip Garrido was meticulous enough to conceal her for 18 years. All they really had to go on was a description of the vehicle he was driving when he abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard, as well as a composite sketch of what he looked like.

Oh, the burden is lifted!

Rather than keeping his mouth closed, Philip Garrido has the audacity to come out in the media and claim it’s a “relief” that he’s been captured by the police… because it was such a burden to maintain the ruse! Maybe you should have listened close to that box, rapist. Perhaps it could have led you into a different endeavor, like hopping inside and having someone bury you in the yard instead.

What is most important now is that Jaycee Lee Dugard has custody of her children and the opportunity to live real lives awaits them. That’s all a parent can ask for.

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Oceans of time have passed. Oh, to feel that joy of reunion. It is indescribable joy. (Photo: flickr.com)

When a child or children are abducted, life for a parent comes to a halt. Intense worry and thoughts of horror invade the senses, leaving you wondering why someone would do such a horrible thing to little ones so young and trusting. Innocence is a child’s right, and no creature has the right to take that from them.

You do everything you can think of to aid authorities in the search. You spin frantically from one thought to the next, only to drop from exhaustion once the centrifugal force of your anxiety reaches its terminus. Then it begins again in your dreams.

Needless to say, this is a horrible place for any child or parent to be. But if the clouds finally do roll away and that child reappears like Jaycee Lee Dugard, what can you do but live in that house of elation that has been baking slowly, hidden away in that corner of your heart? A mother-and-child/father-and-child reunion is pure joy. It is a housewarming.

Jaycee Lee Dugard may have returned

The Sacramento Bee reports that Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 from her South Lake Tahoe neighborhood, back in 1991. According to the Bee, a 29-year-old woman claiming to be Jaycee Lee Dugard walked into a California Bay Area police station. Based upon telephone conversations with mother Terry, she and Jaycee’s stepfather Carl Probyn believe it is indeed the young woman who was kidnapped 18 years ago. Terry will fly from her home in Riverside, California to the Bay Area to meet with the young woman today. It is unclear whether fast cash loans helped her purchase the round-trip ticket.

The details of Jaycee Lee Dugard’s initial disappearance are both simple and horrifying. She was walking home from school when a sedan pulled up alongside her. A door opened, Jaycee Lee Dugard was pulled inside, and the car sped off. This all happened just a block away from her home. Stepfather Probyn even heard Jaycee’s screams, he says. But Jaycee Lee Dugard was gone. There were a number of false sightings, but all seemed lost.

News conference today

Jaycee Lee Dugard, not long before her 1991 abduction (Photo: websleuths.com)

The local El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department will hold a press conference to discuss the new details in this previous cold case, according to the Bee.

Jaycee Lee Dugard’s disappearance led to a large-scale manhunt. Notice of her disappearance spread nationwide and prompted one of the largest police investigations in Bay Area history. Web sites like The Charley Project at http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/d/dugard_jaycee.html helped keep the fires alive. Fast cash loans may have even contributed to the continuing campaign to make people aware of Jaycee Lee Dugard’s disappearance.

It will be interesting to hear her tale. However, a family reunited is what is most important in this story.

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