by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Sept. 1, 2009
All Rights Reserved.

     After 18 years since kidnapped June 10, 1991 in South Lake Tahoe, 29-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was recovered, after Berkeley campus police notified authorities about suspicious behavior of 58-year-old Phillip Craig Garrido who passed leaflets out on campus with his two daughters, prompting a police officer to run a background check.  When he visited his parole officer with his wife, two daughters and a female identified as Alissa, who turned out to be Dugard, Garrido was taken into custody on suspicion of kidnapping and child abuse.  Garrido was on parole for past kidnapping and rape, attesting to the very real public danger posed by sexual predators, whose rehabilitation offers no guarantees.  Garrido abducted 11-year-old Jaycee from a South Lake Tahoe street, literally snatching her from a bus station in a gray sedan.  She was relocated to a rural area of Antioch, Calif.

            Kept isolated in a heavily vegetated yard behind a series of fences lined with sheds and tents, Jaycee was impregnated by Garrido at age 14 and again at 18, apparently giving birth in a tent.  Since abducted, she had not seen a doctor, nor had she completed any formal education, kept by Garrido as a private sex slave.  “It’s a pretty spectacular story just to find someone like that.  Someone we assumed was dead,” said Bill Clark, chief assistant district attorney for El Dorado County, an area running from east Sacramento to the Sierra Nevada foothills, including South Lake Tahoe.  While it’s exciting to recover someone presumed dead, Jaycee faces a horrific adjustment not only from the ordeal but the developmental delays stemming from her captivity and prolonged isolation.  “Living in a backyard the lasted 18 years must take its toll,” said El Dorado under-sheriff Fred Kollar.

            Deprived of any contact with the outside world, especially a normal education, Jaycee will show significant cognitive impairments, affecting her perceptions, reality-testing and ability to comprehend her situation.  “None of the children had ever been to school, none had been to a doctor, they were kept in complete isolation in the compound, if you will, at the house,” Kollar said, painting a bleak picture of Jaycee’s abuse.  “I think she’s doing good.  I haven’t really talked to her personally.  I talked to my wife,” said Jaycee’s stepfather Carl Probyn, saying she looked “fairly healthy,” given the 18-year-long nightmare.  “My wife says Jaycee is really feeling guilty for bonding with this guy.  She’s really having a problem with that,” giving the first hint of severe psychological damage.  Garrido’s father told the Associated Press that his son “is out of his mind,” admitting to past LSD use.

            After abducted in 1991, the 11-year-old Jaycee was kept isolated in Garrido’s overgrown backyard.  He was a registered sex offender for prior convictions of rape and kidnapping, likely having sex with Jaycee immediately, eventually impregnating her sometime after she got her period.  Despite visited by his parole officer to his home, Garrido managed to keep his abductee and children out of sight in the camouflaged backyard.  “The way the house was set up, the way the backyard is set up, you could walk through the backyard, walk through the house, and never know,” said Kollar, explaining how authorities overlooked the crime scene.  Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf admitted to investigating a neighbor’s complaint in 2006 but failed to uncover the crime.  Embarrassed by the mistake, Rupf admitted a simple background check would have exposed Garrido.

            Mentally disordered sex offenders like Garrido, represent a clear-and-present danger to innocent citizens round the sate.  When released from prisons and state hospitals, sexual predators typically relocate in various rural and urban settings, unbeknownst to unsuspecting neighbors.  Recidivism or relapse rates are extremely high for sex offenders, whose powerful urges, obsessions and compulsions prevent them from living normal lives.  “In the last couple years he started getting into strange religious stuff.  We kind of felt sorry for him,” said Time Allen, president of East County Glass and Window, Inc, who bought business cards from Garrido’s printing business.  Peculiar “religious” beliefs are often accepted in “born-again” circles, attributing psychotic thoughts to deep religious convictions.  Extreme religiosity is associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

            Jaycee should be carefully evaluated for developmental delays and brainwashing after spending her formative years living with a mentally disordered sex offender.  Law enforcement officials would be well-advised to keep better track of the whereabouts of sexual predators relocated out of prisons and mental hospitals to various communities round the state.  Recent proposals to thin the state’s prison population should carefully heed Jaycee’s case, redoubling efforts to monitor the whereabouts of mentally disordered sex offenders.  Cutbacks to the state’s prisons, mental health and probation services make monitoring dangerous criminals difficult once released from prison or mental hospitals.  Before others like Jaycee spend their lives recovering from such horriffic abuse, the state and local authorities must do a better job monitoring and managing dangerous criminals after their release.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.