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Re: Stepdad: Girl ‘bonded’ with captor
Stepdad: Girl ‘bonded’ with captor
Says she's 'fairly healthy'; victim allegedly had 2 kids by abductor
NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 2:33 p.m. ET, Fri., Aug 28, 2009
PLACERVILLE, Calif. - A woman who was kidnapped when she was 11 apparently feels guilty for bonding with her abductor through 18 years in captivity, her stepfather says.
Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, was reunited Thursday with her family, nearly two decades after she was snatched from a South Lake Tahoe street. Authorities say she was kept behind a series of fences, sheds and tents, even giving birth to her suspected abductor's children in the suburban backyard compound less than 200 miles from her childhood home.
Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, said Dugard was "fairly healthy," given her ordeal.
"I think she’s doing good. I haven’t talked to her personally. I talked to my wife," Probyn told NBC's TODAY show Friday.
"My wife says Jaycee is really feeling guilty for bonding with this guy. She’s really having a problem with that."
Phillip Garrido, 58, is being held for investigation of various kidnapping and sex charges. Authorities said his 54-year-old wife, Nancy Garrido, was with him during the 1991 kidnapping in South Lake Tahoe and she also has been arrested.
Garrido was expected to appear in court on Friday afternoon. Investigators said he did not yet have an attorney.
Garrido's father told The Associated Press on Friday his son is "absolutely out of his mind."
Manuel Garrido said his son 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 said he hasn't seen his son in years and has never been to the house where Phillip Garrido allegedly held Dugard captive.
Backyard compound
Dugard was taken directly to Garrudo's house in suburban Antioch and sheltered from the world in a secret, leafy backyard, investigators said Thursday. Her abductor, investigators said, raped her and fathered two children with her, the first when Jaycee was about 14. Those girls, now 11 and 15, also were kept hidden away in the backyard compound behind the home.
"None of the children have ever been to school, they've never been to a doctor," El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar said. "They were kept in complete isolation in this compound."
Even a parole agent who visited Garrido's home didn't have an inkling about the hidden compound, Kollar said. Garrido is a registered sex offender on federal parole for rape and kidnapping convictions.
"The way the house is set up, the way the backyard is set up, you could walk through the backyard, walk through the house, and never know," Kollar said.
But neighbors said there were clues even before a parole agent on Wednesday noticed Dugard, now 29, who accompanied Garrido, his wife and the children to a parole office.
Neighbor Diane Doty said she could see the tents and often heard children playing in the backyard, the corner of which abuts her own backyard. She said she even suspected the children lived in the tents, but her husband said she should leave the family alone.
"I asked my husband, 'Why is he living in tents?'" she said. "And he said, 'Maybe that is how they like to live.'"
Family overjoyed
Dugard's stepfather, who witnessed her abduction and was a longtime suspect in the case, said he was overwhelmed by the news after doing everything he could to help find her.
"I’m really shocked to get her back," Probyn said on the TODAY show.
"Jaycee was really a mellow girl, so that’s probably what kept her alive. She just bonded with this guy and she didn’t try to get away and it probably kept her alive. If she would have been really spunky and fight and try to escape, maybe she would have been killed. It’s just a shock after 18 years that she’s still around."
Probyn, 60, said the kidnapping killed his marriage. He is separated from his wife, Terry Probyn. "We were just happy. This destroyed us," he told TODAY.
As for Garrido, Probyn said he had little to say other than he hopes he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. "You're pretty sick," he said.
Break in case
The case broke after Garrido was spotted Tuesday with two children as he tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley, campus to hand out religious literature. Officers said he was acting suspiciously toward the children. They questioned him and did a background check, determined that he was a parolee and informed his parole officer.
Garrido was ordered to appear for a parole meeting and arrived Wednesday with Dugard, who identified herself as "Allissa," his wife, and two children. During questioning, corrections officials said he admitted to kidnapping Dugard.
Police said they had no evidence that Dugard had ever reached out to anyone beyond the compound walls.
"She was in good health, but living in a backyard for the past 18 years does take its toll," Kollar said.
The backyard compound had electricity from extension cords and a rudimentary outhouse and shower, "as if you were camping," Kollar said.
Authorities said they do not know if Garrido also abused his daughters, but they are investigating.
'Little blond girls'
Garrido's compound was located in Antioch, a city of 100,000 about 170 miles from the Dugard family home in South Lake Tahoe.
People who knew Garrido said he became increasingly fanatic about his religious beliefs in recent years, sometimes breaking out into song and claiming that God spoke to him through a box.
"In the last couple years he started getting into this strange religious stuff. We kind of felt sorry for him," said Tim Allen, president of East County Glass and Window Inc. in Pittsburg, Calif., who bought business cards and letterhead from Garrido's printing business for the last decade.
Three times in recent years, Garrido arrived at Allen's showroom with two "cute little blond girls" in tow, he said.
In April 2008, Garrido registered a corporation called Gods Desire at his home address, according to the California Secretary of State. During recent visits to the showroom, Garrido would talk about quitting the printing business to preach full time and gave the impression he was setting up a church, Allen said.
"He rambled. It made no sense," he said.
Blog postings
In a blog that appears to have been maintained by Garrido, he wrote that he had hired a private investigator to verify his ability to speak to people using only his mind. In an "affadavit" posted there, he said he had the ability to "control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena."
Garrido gave a rambling, sometimes incoherent phone interview to KCRA-TV from the El Dorado County jail Thursday in which he said he had not admitted to a kidnapping and that he had turned his life around since the birth of his first daughter 15 years ago.
"I tell you here's the story of what took place at this house, and you're going to be absolutely impressed. It's a disgusting thing that took place from the end to the beginning. But I turned my life completely around," he said.
In addition to kidnapping allegations, court records showed both Garridos were being held for investigation of rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and kidnapping someone under 14 with intent to rape. Phillip Garrido also faces allegations of sexual penetration.
Rap sheet
Garrido has a long rap sheet dating to the 1970s.
He was convicted of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman whom he snatched from a South Lake Tahoe parking lot, handcuffed, tied down and held in a mini-warehouse in Reno, according to a November 1976 story in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
He also has a conviction for rape by force or fear stemming from the same incident, and was paroled from a Nevada state prison in 1988, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
In 1991, police believe he was trolling for victims in South Lake Tahoe in a Ford Granada when he snatched Dugard from a bus stop outside her home. 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, from whom he is separated, was devastated by the kidnapping. He said for 10 years after the crime, she would take a week off work at Christmas and on the anniversary of the abduction and spend the time crying at home.
Jaycee Lee Dugard has retained custody of her children and was staying at a Bay area motel, authorities said.
NBC News, The Associated Press and most other media, as a matter of policy, avoid identifying victims of alleged sexual abuse by name in its news reports. However, Dugard's disappearance had been known and reported for nearly two decades, making impossible any effort to shield her identity now.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- mickronson
- Rep: 118
Re: Stepdad: Girl ‘bonded’ with captor
I`m into bondage but this is just fuckin wrong.
Lock this fucker up in a dark hole and forget about him,.
Re: Stepdad: Girl ‘bonded’ with captor
I'm starting to think these "bonding rituals" are a bit more common than previously thought. Experts have always pointed to the statistic that if a kidnapped kid isn't found within 48 hours, the chances that they are dead are somewhere near 90%.
There are quite a few examples of their abductors living full lives with their victims, so the so called experts need to start revising their theories to better understand the motives behind various child abductions.
I remember this girl. Her face was plastered everywhere in the early/mid 90s. Glad she is alive, but that Stockholm Syndrome crap is creepy as hell.
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