The family of a young woman who was kidnapped as an 11-year-old schoolgirl is elated at her return and is working to “reconnect” after 18 years apart, her aunt said on Thursday.
“This is a joyful time for my family,” said Tina Dugard, the aunt of Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, who was held in a prison of sheds and tents by convicted rapist Phillip Garrido.
“The smile on my sister’s face is as wide as the sea,” Dugard said of Jaycee’s mother, Terry Probyn. “She is so glad to have her eldest daughter home.”
Tina Dugard said her family was spending time “reconnecting ... sharing stories,” and that Jaycee was getting to know her sister, who was just a baby when Jaycee was abducted in 1991.
Garrido fathered two children with Jaycee during her captivity.
Tina Dugard said her niece and her children were now in a “secluded place reconnecting” with their family.
“I was with them until recently. We spent time sharing memories and stories and getting to know each other again,” she said. “Jaycee remembers all of us. She is especially enjoying getting to know her little sister who was just a baby when Jaycee was taken. “Not only have we laughed and cried together but we’ve spent time sitting quietly, taking pleasure in each other’s company.”
Dugard also praised the way Jaycee had educated the two daughters she had with Garrido, who are now aged 15 and 11.
“Jaycee did a truly amazing job with the limited resources and education that she herself had. And we are so proud of her,” Tina Dugard said.
In an interview published in the Orange County Register on Thursday Tina Dugard said Jaycee and her children were “happy.”
“There’s a sense of comfort and optimism, a sense of happiness. Jaycee and her girls are happy,” she told the newspaper.
“People probably want to think that it’s been this horrible, scary thing for all of us,” Tina Dugard said. “[But] the horrible, scary thing happened 18 years ago, and continued to happen for the last 18 years. The darkness and despair [has lifted].”
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