Jaycee Lee Dugard - A Stolen Life

Jaycee Lee Dugard - A Stolen Life

Elizabeth Roberti

 

                   

                             Jaycee Dugard                                Phillip Garrido and Nancy Garrido

                      Age 31            Age 11

 

 

Background Information:

 



               Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at the age of 11 on June 10, 1991 in South Lake Tahoe, California by a man named Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy.  Phillip was a paroled sex offender who abducted Jaycee on a street in which she was walking to the bus stop from home on her way to school.  He was in the car with his wife who had spotted Jaycee for Phillip and helped him capture her.  Searches began looking for Jaycee immediately after the kidnapping when they realized that she was not in school that day; however, there was no success in finding the little girl.  Jaycee Lee Dugard remained missing from that day for the next 18 years of her life.  Even when there were reports of little girls’ voices coming from the back yard of Garrido’s home – which wasn’t supposed to happen considering he was a registered sex offender, police made appearances but never checked the back yard where Jaycee was being held captive the whole time.  During these 18 years of captivity Dugard gave birth to two little girls right there in the back yard, one at the age of 14 and the second at the age of 17. 

                On August 24^th and 25^th of 2009, convicted sex offender Phillip Craig Garrido visited the campus of UC Berkeley accompanied by two young girls.  Their unusual behavior there sparked an investigation that led to his bringing the two girls to a parole office on August 26^th, accompanied by a young woman who was then identified as Jaycee Lee Dugard.  Garrido at age 58 and his wife Nancy Garrido at age 54 were arrested for kidnapping and other charges.  On April 28, 2011, they pleaded guilty to Dugard’s kidnapping and sexual assault.  Law enforcement officers believe Dugard was kept in a concealed area behind Garrido’s house in Antioch for 18 years.  At the time of their reappearance, Jaycee’s two daughters were aged 11 and 15 and thought Jaycee was their sister and that Phillip and Nancy were their parents.  On June 2^nd of 2011, Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 431 years imprisonment and his wife Nancy received 36 years to life.

 

Relating "A Stolen Life" to the Class:

After Jaycee was freed from captivity she wrote a book called "A Stolen Life" which tells the story - in her own words, of the horrendous kidnapping she had undergone 18 years ago.  In the book she talks about every detail she can remember of her life just two hours away from her family at the Garridos.

After reading parts of the book "A Stolen Life" I knew right away that this story related to our class material.  Jaycee is one of the strongest people I have ever heard of; she is courageous and such a powerful woman and I don’t know how she made it through those 18 years alive. 

During one part of the book, Jaycee goes into detail about the first time Phillip Garrido raped her.  She was just a little girl and had never even heard of sex before let alone rape.  She explains that she didn’t know if what he was doing to her was wrong or if this was normal, all she knew is that she wanted it to stop.  During her rape she was handcuffed and restrained and the harder she squirmed the worse he told her it would be for her.  Because of this, she found herself “going away” in her mind – a strategy she immediately got from just wishing she was anywhere but there at that moment. 

When I read this, crying of course, I thought of the poem 'To Imagination' by Emily Bronte.  Dugard had such an amazing imagination that she could escape the rape and 'go somewhere' wonderful in her mind. 

"What matters it that all around

Danger and grief and darkness lie,

If but within our bosom's bound

We hold a bright unsullied sky,

Warm with ten thousand mingled rays

Of suns that know no winter days?"

I took this part of the poem to mean that no matter how horrible everything around us seems to be, whether it's danger, grief and darkness (In Dugards case, in my opinion, all three), we can find a place within where there's no such thing as those bad things but only ten thousand rays of sun.  Jaycee used this inner peace to escape her tragedy and be a strong woman and see the hope that lies beyond the moment of despair.