Californian kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard feels guilty for forming a bond with the man who abducted her as a schoolgirl and held her prisoner for 18 years, her stepfather said on Friday.
Carl Probyn, who watched helplessly as 11-year-old Dugard was snatched from outside her home in South Lake Tahoe in 1991, said his former stepdaughter had been reunited with her mother and half-sister after being found this week.
Dugard, now 29, was held prisoner by convicted rapist Phillip Garrido in a secret backyard compound in Antioch, east of San Francisco, where she was reportedly raped and gave birth to two children by Garrido.
Her near two-decade ordeal came to an end on Wednesday when authorities learned her identity.
However, Probyn told reporters that the woman was now struggling to come to terms with what had been inflicted upon her.
“Jaycee feels that she has real regrets for bonding with this guy,” Probyn told reporters outside his home in Orange, south of Los Angeles.
Dugard and the daughters she had with Garrido had felt nervous having dinner in public after being freed this week.
“They had to leave because the girls weren’t used to having people around them,” Probyn said.
Dugard, however, “remembered everything” from her childhood, Probyn said after speaking to his ex-wife, who had been reunited with her daughter at a motel outside San Francisco.
Probyn’s other daughter Shayna, who is Dugard’s half-sister, had also attended the reunion.
Shayna had told her father that Dugard “looks really good, almost like when she was abducted. She looks good, the girls [Dugard’s daughters] are good, everybody’s running around. They’re all together.”
Meanwhile, the Californian couple has denied kidnapping the 11-year-old girl and keeping her as a sex slave for 18 years as questions mounted over how their alleged crimes went undetected for so long.
Garrido and his wife, Nancy, 54, pleaded not guilty to 29 felony counts including kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment, following the discovery of Dugard on Wednesday, nearly two decades after the blonde schoolgirl was snatched outside her home in 1991.
Dugard, now 29, was confined in a makeshift prison of sheds and tents in what police have described as a “backyard within a backyard” at Garrido’s home in Antioch.
On Thursday, police revealed that convicted rapist and registered sex offender Garrido had abused Dugard and fathered two daughters with the captive, now aged 15 and 11, who had also been kept in the compound.
In a bizarre interview with a local TV station on Friday, Garrido acknowledged that his abduction of Dugard from outside her South Lake Tahoe home in 1991 had been a “disgusting thing.”
But Garrido, described by neighbors as a religious fundamentalist who wanted to set up his own church, insisted he had “turned his life around” since kidnapping Dugard and that the case was a “heart-warming” story.
Dugard, meanwhile, was reunited with her mother and half-sister at a motel outside San Francisco on Friday. Her former stepfather Carl Probyn said Dugard was struggling to come to terms with what had been inflicted upon her.
Experts said it could take years for Dugard to recover.
“I’m very concerned about her condition and her ability to heal,” said Alison Walls, a clinical psychologist at the University of the Rockies. “She will really need to be in a trauma program and treated by specialists and it will take a long time.”
Dugard was found after police reported Garrido acting suspiciously at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was trying to hand out religious literature propounding claims he was able to channel the voice of God.
He was summoned to a meeting on Wednesday with his parole officer who, having previously visited the Garrido home, found it strange that in addition to his wife Nancy he brought along two girls and a woman he called “Allissa.”
Dugard’s real identity emerged during the course of the meeting and Garrido and his wife Nancy were detained.
Nancy Garrido sobbed throughout a five-minute court hearing on Friday while her husband stood expressionless nearby. Both entered not guilty pleas through defense attorneys.
Meanwhile, neighbors of the Garridos expressed shock that the secret prison could go unnoticed for so long.
“It’s kind of embarrassing to be here this long and not know what’s going on. How could that go on under all of our noses?” said one neighbor, who gave his name only as Steve.
“When I first met him [Garrido] I thought he was a nice guy. Now I’d just like to see him shot or hung,” Steve said.
Police in Contra Costa County meanwhile admitted that they had received a tip in November 2006 that children were living in Garrido’s backyard, but failed to follow it up properly.
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