One of the most unthinkable things happened in the news today. A 29 year-old woman was reunited with her mother and stepfather 18 years after the abduction. Jaycee Dugard was abducted in 1991 (the same year Nirvana came out with "Smells Like Teen Spirit") while she was waiting for a bus in South Lake Tahoe, CA. Until today (August 27,2009), she had been living, closed off from the world, in a secret shed in the backyard of her abductors. The most bizarre thing to me, however, is that she isn't the only who has been living in the shed. Who was her roommate for the past decade and a half? If you guessed her abductors you are wrong. She was found to have two children with her male abductor. The two children, both girls, are aged 11 and 15 meaning Jaycee had them when she was 14! Now I know what you are asking, "Who would do such a thing?" Her abductors were Phillip and Nancy Garrido of Antioch, CA. They were caught when Phillip was stopped by campus police at the University of California, Berkeley. He then spilled the beans in a meeting with his parole officer that he had kidnapped Jaycee and that the two children were his.
Phillip was paroled from a Nevada state prison from a 1988 for sexual assault. I think that punishments for these sexual assaults should be much steeper. If this man can hold a girl hostage for 18 years while on parole I think there is something wrong.
Phillip Garrido has been booked on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, and related offenses. His wife has been charged of kidnapping and conspiracy and they have been held on bail of one million dollars according to cnn.com. Do you think this is enough of a punishment? These people took the childhood away from this girl and stole a family's daughter. Noone can have memories of this girl growing up. Lucky for her, she got out of this ordeal with her life unlike many of the cases similar to this. However, now there are now two young girls that will most likely have many problems in life because they only know the inside of a shed. In the darkness of this situation, maybe it will give one other family with a missing person hope that they will be found.
Phillip was paroled from a Nevada state prison from a 1988 for sexual assault. I think that punishments for these sexual assaults should be much steeper. If this man can hold a girl hostage for 18 years while on parole I think there is something wrong.
Phillip Garrido has been booked on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, and related offenses. His wife has been charged of kidnapping and conspiracy and they have been held on bail of one million dollars according to cnn.com. Do you think this is enough of a punishment? These people took the childhood away from this girl and stole a family's daughter. Noone can have memories of this girl growing up. Lucky for her, she got out of this ordeal with her life unlike many of the cases similar to this. However, now there are now two young girls that will most likely have many problems in life because they only know the inside of a shed. In the darkness of this situation, maybe it will give one other family with a missing person hope that they will be found.
What do you think of this situation? How do you think these horrible abductors should be punished? What do you think the lives of the two young girls will end up like?
This story was shocking when I first read it yesterday. This isn't usually the typical ending to an abudction--especially 18 years later. Although this girl made it out alive, she never had a normal childhood and because of that, will probably never have a normal adulthood either. I certainly hope this couple doesn't get paroled again! I sometimes wonder if certain people should even be allowed parole. If you commit an awful crime, you have to do the time. Their punishment should be harsh, and lenghty, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI just hear this story not too long ago and I find it to be very disturbing. It is insane how long this went on without anyone finding out. It is a story that gives families with missing loved ones hope that they may still be alive if they haven’t been found. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the two young girl’s lives. They will have to learn pretty much everything and will be scarred emotionally for sure.
ReplyDeleteThis was an amazing story--incredibly sad--but amazing. It made me think of the story from Austria (?) where the dad kept his daughter in a basement apartment/dungeon and fathered kids with her. So icky.
ReplyDeleteSince there is really no way to make restitution for what was taken from this girl and now her daughters, I really can't think of an acceptable punishment. But for her sake and the sake of the girls, I hope both the husband and wife go to jail and never get out so she never has to see them or think about them again.
Zack,
ReplyDeleteThere are so many questions in my mind regarding this story. First, why did Dugard not try and escape earlier? I have also been wondering what made her abductor Phillip suddenly decide to confess after all these years.
It blows my mind that a married man would hold this woman captive, rape her and that his wife did nothing about it.
I think it’s great that she has finally been reunited with her family, but at the same time she has lost many years of her life that she will never get back.
This story is so bizarre to me. It seems like there could have been something done by her or neighbors or somebody. How can she live outside in her abductors back yard and no one knows about it? How could she not sneak away in the middle of the night or leave a secret message for her neighbors? There are a lot of unanswered questions, some that may never have answers that I would like to know. I saw on the morning news on this last Friday that the next door neighbor actually made two complaints to the local police about hearing disturbing noises made by children coming from the shed in the back yard. The police even came and searched it and never saw anything out of the ordinary. How could that be?
ReplyDeleteIt is a very good ending to a very bad situation, but I still think there was something more going on. And I definitely think that there is something wrong with the system if he can be on parole and have abducted a little girl for 18 years and even father two children with her and nobody knew about it. I think all three (the mom and her two girls) are going to need a lot of therapy to recover from living in the sheltered circumstances that they lived in.