For the next 18 years, Jaycee was forced to live in Antioch, California, in a squalid hidden backyard behind a false fence consisting of two tents and several small dilapidated buildings. The only electricity was supplied by an electrical cord from the main house.

Phillip Garrido, known by neighborhood children as “Creepy Phil,” sexually abused the young Jaycee, and even fathered her two children, named Starlite and Angel, whom she gave birth to when she was 14 and 18. The two girls were told that Jaycee was their older sister, not their mother. None of the children had ever gone to school or seen a doctor or dentist. Even the births were performed without medical assistance.

In a previous incident, Phillip Garrido was convicted in 1977 of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman from a parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, and raping her numerous times at a Reno storage unit that the investigator from the case described as a “sex palace.” It contained various sex aids, sex magazines and videos, stage lights, and a bed. Garrido was convicted on a federal charge of kidnapping, but served only 10 years of a 50-year sentence. He also served less than a year for a concurrent Nevada sentence of five years to life for sexual assault. However, he was paroled in 1988. As part of his punishment, Garrido was required to report to his parole agent several times a month and was subject to routine surprise home visits and random drug and alcohol tests. Garrido was also required to wear a GPS around his ankle. He was also required to register as a sex offender, which he did.

However, even before the 1977 incident, Garrido was arrested in 1972 on suspicion of drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl when he was only 21. That case was dropped when the victim refused to testify.

Some people question why Jaycee did not try to escape or notify others that she was being held against her will. After all, she worked with the public in Garrido’s printing business that he ran out of his home and she had access to the Internet. Child psychologists and abduction experts say that young kidnapping victims rarely risk trying to escape because of fear, coercion, or threats from their captors. According to one psychologist quoted in USA Today, “For many people, the most important part is survival. ‘How do I survive this?’ If people are captive, they have to figure what to do to please their captor so they are not further harmed.” Experts also note that Jaycee did not want to risk her children’s lives and therefore made no attempt to escape.

Jaycee was “discovered” when she, her two children, and Garrido’s wife all went with Garrido to his parole officer. Garrido was called in to his parole officer’s office for questioning after being alerted by University of California, Berkeley campus security that Garrido was acting suspiciously and the two young girls he had brought with him to the campus to get approval for a religious meeting were “very pale and acted like robots.” The campus security officer ran a background check on Garrido, discovered he was a convicted sex offender, and immediately notified Garrido’s probation officer. Authorities state that at this meeting, Garrido confessed to kidnapping Jaycee in 1991.

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that this 18-year nightmare did not have to happen, with new details surfacing that authorities blew numerous chances to find Jaycee and her two children and catch Garrido. The last surprise visit of Garrido’s house was conducted in July 2008, but as the searches before, they did not look carefully in the backyard, where a false fence hid the makeshift prison.

In 2006, in response to a neighbor’s complaint that there was a “psychotic” sex addict living at Garrido’s house and there were children living in tents in Garrido’s backyard, a probation officer showed up at Garrido’s house, but he had no idea that the backyard was actually a labyrinth of tents, sheds, and buildings that were Jaycee’s prison. The probation officer did not conduct a search of the house, garden, or backyard. Rather, the probation officer only talked with Garrido on the front porch of the home. The probation officer’s only advice to Garrido was that it violated local ordinances to have people sleeping outside in tents. The sheriff’s department acknowledged that it had completely missed the opportunity to thoroughly investigate the property and arrest Garrido on this occasion. The sheriff stated that Garrido had been taken at face value, but that no officer should believe anything a sex offender says.

Jaycee Dugard was 29 years old when she was freed from captivity, at which time the two younger girls, 11 and 15, learned that Jaycee was actually their mother, not their older sister. There is no telling at the present moment the severity of the emotional injuries and psychological damage to Jaycee and her two children. Certainly, though, it is a horrendous event that will plague them the rest of their lives and require years of psychotherapy. Phillip and Nancy Garrido have pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnap, rape, and imprisonment charges related to Jaycee’s 1991 abduction.

Serious legal questions abound as to why Jaycee wasn’t discovered sooner and the competency of Garrido’s probation officer in making surprise home visits. Currently, it remains a mystery as to how a convicted sex offender on life parole was able to indulge, undetected and unquestioned, in his worst fantasies for 18 long years. Certainly the probation officers should have conducted more thorough investigations of Garrido’s house and adjacent property when making their occasional surprise visits. The criminal justice system let Jaycee down and we should be ever vigilant to ensure that such events do not occur in the future.

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