The kidnappers kept the girl in the garden like an animal. After many years came a gigantic punishment and compensation

Little Jaycee Dugard, a fifth grader, was walking to the school bus like any other day when a car pulled up next to her. She assumed that someone wanted to ask for directions, so she casually approached the open window. It was the last step in freedom for eighteen long years. Kidnapper Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy first stunned the poor girl and dragged her into a car, to take her more than a hundred kilometers away to their property in the Californian city of Antioch, with a population of one hundred thousand, as described by the Los Angeles Times, among many others. Nobody wants to imagine what happened next.

She had to live in the garden

The 11-year-old girl was dragged into a garden shed where the couple left her naked and tied up for more than a week so she couldn’t escape. The kidnappers told her that the garden was guarded by dogs that would attack her as soon as she tried to escape. The girl was thus at the mercy of the cruel couple. After a short time, k imprisonment in the garden, which resembled the rearing of an animal more than the care of a child, also added physical assault and sexual abuse by Garrido, which had a concrete result three years later. At that time, 14-year-old Jaycee had her first daughter, and three years later, a second girl was born. Jaycee herself later recounted these moments to ABC News. “I didn’t even know for a long time that I was pregnant and I was going to give birth,” she explained. The “family” then resolved to tell the children that their mother was Nancy and that Jaycee, who was called Allissa at the time, was their sister. Unfortunately, it must be stated that it took a very long time to come out.

She did not take advantage of the freedom

Phillip Garrido was a manipulator that is hard to find. He was able to control not only his wife Nancy, but also the kidnapped girl. She was later even allowed to go to the garden, from time to time she had fun with the neighbors in the area, she even worked in Garrido’s printing house. She never revealed her true identity or the fact that she was kidnapped. She even had a phone and other communication devices available at work, but she never used them to ask anyone for help. According to the police’s later explanation, she developed the so-called Stockholm syndrome, i.e. she began to sympathize with her captor at least partially.

The strange behavior became noticeable

Although a wide area of ​​Jaycee’s residence was combed after Jaycee’s abduction, the girl was not found. Police didn’t track her down until many years later, when Garrido and his (and Jaycee’s) daughters showed up at a local school campus to arrange a religious lecture. The school employee did not seem shocked by the girls’ behavior, so she took action. Soon the kidnapper turned himself in to the police, but still nothing out of the ordinary happened. He was interrogated, “explained” everything and calmly went home.

The police came to talk to him

Nothing happened even when the neighbors reported to the police station that they believed the children were living in the garden, not in the house. The officer arrived at the home, alerted Garrido to any potential problems, and left, the Reno Gazette Journal reported. It seems that the situation was hopeless. And maybe she would have been if Garrido, a previously convicted and paroled drug addict alcoholic, had not decided to help the police in the hunt for others like him. Believing that he was already a completely different person, he wrote a kind of recommendation on how the police should deal with people like him and took it to the FBI. Before long, he and his supposed family were summoned.

They did not lack self-confidence

They all came, apparently without any fear of disclosure. Everyone gave the same testimony, according to them, it was an orderly family with an exemplary and loving father. Not even Jaycee said a single unkind word against Garrido, even when they were separated. Only after further investigation and insistence did Garrido confess to everything, and then it was the kidnapped woman’s turn. At first she kept denying and defending her captor, but later she finally admitted everything. She claimed, however, that it was not Stockholm syndrome, where she might even fall in love with the kidnapper over time, but a learned behavior that helped her survive in such a terrifying situation.

The return was not easy either

Both Jaycee and her children could return home, which they did. Like all previous years, neither return to the free life and it was not easy for the original family, but according to the testimony of the relatives, they all managed it in the end.

Record penalty and compensation

The kidnappers went to trial, and in a long and complicated process that also involved Garrido’s other victims, both ended up behind bars. Nancy to 36 years and for Phillip the judge prepared 431 years in prison. But that wasn’t enough for the kidnapped girl’s family, and soon after, they sued the state of California for the mistake that essentially allowed Jaycee to be kidnapped and imprisoned. Twenty million dollars was eventually paid out as compensation, according to CNN. The years spent in the hands of the kidnapper, the abuse and the ruined life cannot be repaired.

Source: author’s article

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