Thaindian News

By Sumit Sengupta

Aug 28 (IBNS) Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted by a sex offender at the age of 11, was finally reunited with her family after 18 years.

The 29-year-old Jaycee was abducted 18 years ago after a sex offender abducted her as she walked to her school bus stop in South Lake Tahoe, California.

People.com reported that her abductor enslaved her in a cluster of sheds in a “hidden backyard within a backyard,” raped her and had two children with her before he was arrested this week, police revealed at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Officials say abductors Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy Garrido, 54, of Antioch, CA, will be arraigned Friday on charges likely to include kidnapping, conspiracy, rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sexual penetration. Officials say Garrido has already admitted to the abduction.

Jaycee, who was 11 years old when she was taken, appeared in good health. Dugard’s younger daughter is the same age that Dugard was when she was snatched as her stepfather watched in horror. Her older daughter is 15.

“None of the children have ever been to school, they’ve never been to a doctor … From what we could tell, they never had any outside contact,” El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar said. “Living in the backyard for 18 years does take its toll.”

Dugard and her mother, Terry Probyn, and her younger sister, Shana, were reunited Thursday morning in Concord, Calif.

The biggest mystery now is why, after so many years of successfully keeping Dugard in seclusion, Garrido took a series of peculiar steps that led to her recovery. Kollar says that Garrido recently took his two daughters with Dugard to the University of California, Berkeley campus to distribute flyers.