Table of Contents
Introduction
THIS BOOK IS FULL OF SOME of the vilest criminals imaginable. They take people, mainly young girls and boys, away from their families and subject them to unspeakable abuse and torture. The kidnappers do this for their own sexual and sadistic satisfaction, raping and tormenting at will. They do not, by and large, kill their victims. Instead, those that fall into their hands are forced to endure suffering seemingly without end.
The self-confessed monsters who commit these crimes attempt to rob their young and defenseless victims of all hope. They tell them that their parents do not want them back. No one is looking for them. No one cares. Victims are even told that their religion sanctions what is happening to them. They must suffer cruelty, neglect, maltreatment, squalor, and exploitation without complaint.
With no one to turn to, victims often become dependent on their captors for fear of something worse. Their kidnappers have at least kept them alive, though they make life a living hell. Others out there, victims are told, would be happy to torture them to death.
The perpetrators are mainly men, though some kidnappers have used female accomplices. The victims are usually young women, held naked as sex toys; they are defiled and humiliated, damaged both physically and psychologically. In many cases, they never fully recover.
Nothing can be said in defense of the offenders. No amount of psychiatric probing can explain or excuse their crimes. These are often individuals that medical science has already given up on. Morally, they are depraved.
Many kidnappers are persuaded to plead guilty on all charges brought against them to spare their victims the horror of reliving the details of their captivity, or so it is said. But the real reason they plead guilty seems to be that they dont want the world to know the true depths of their depravity.
But even in this dark corner of human experience, there is a spark of hope. You cannot but admire the strength, resilience, resourcefulness, and sheer courage of the victims. Somehow, no matter what they have been though, the human spirit survives. Often, in the end, the victims find a way to outsmart their captors, even while feeling compassion for them. It seems, in the end, good can triumph over evil.
This book is not for the squeamish. The victims have been to the very limits of what human beings can endure. It is best read as the story of these survivors, each a tribute to guts, nerve, determination, and tenacity against all the odds. The survivorsmany do not want to be considered victimshave endured the worst privations and made it through. They have been into the abyss, many literally held underground, only to fight their way back into the light of day.
Nigel Cawthorne
Bloomsbury, London
March 2012
Chapter 1
Jaycee Lee DugardThe Backyard Prisoner
ON JUNE 10, 1991, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Jaycee Lee Dugard woke to hear the front door close. Her mother, Terry Probyn, had left without giving her a kiss good-bye. Jaycee lingered in bed, then hurried to get herself ready for school. She wanted to catch the school bus and not annoy her stepfather Carl Probyn by asking him for a ride.
She dressed quickly in pink stretch pants and her favorite kitty shirt, though she could not find the ring she wanted to wear, which she had bought at the craft fair the day before. Although she felt a little queasy, she did not want to ask to take the day off school in case it provoked an argument with her stepdad. Instead, she scarfed some oatmeal. Luckily, Carl was outside. He often scolded her for her table manners. She decided that when she became a parent, she would not be so mean to her children.
Jaycee made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her lunch and packed an apple and a box of juice. Then she went to say good-bye to her baby sister, Shayna, but she was not awake yet. She had to make do with saying good-bye to her cat, a black Manx named Monkey who was outside on the deck. He had been separated from his mother at young age and loved to snuggle up to Jaycees fuzzy blanket. It was as if he thought she was his mom. Jaycee did not like leaving him outside because her moms cat, Bridget, had been eaten by wild animals after they had moved to South Lake Tahoe the previous September.
The family had left Anaheim after their apartment had been broken into. Although at the age of ten, Jaycee had already been considered old enough to walk to school by herself, one time when she had been walking home a group of guys in a car shouted at her and gestured for her to come over, and she ran away and hid. Since the move to Tahoe, she felt safe.
On her way to catch the school bus, she was often accompanied by a neighbors dog named Ninja. But the dog was nowhere to be seen that morning, so Jaycee started walking up Washoan Boulevard toward the bus stop on her own.
Back at the house, Carl Probyn watched his stepdaughter walk up the hill. He noticed a gray sedan with a couple in it drive past the girl. Then it did a U-turn and came back. The driver rolled down his window as if to ask the girl for directions, then he leaned out of the door and grabbed her. Jaycee screamed and tried to get away, but she heard a cracking sound. She had been paralyzed with a stun gun and was dragged into the back of the car. A blanket was thrown over her. Someone sat on her, and the car took off.
Carl had just seen his stepdaughter be abducted in broad daylight, but she was too far away for him to stop it. He jumped on his bike and cycled after the car. There was no way he could keep up, and the car had lost him before he could get the license number. He returned home and called the police. When they arrived, he gave them a description of the car and the couple in it. By then they were long gone.
Some way out of town, the car stopped. The woman who had been sitting on top of Jaycee got out and moved into the front of the car. Jaycee had been stifling under the blanket and had peed herself due to the effects of the stun gun. The man who had grabbed her offered her a drink. She was thirsty and took it.
Suddenly, the man was laughing. He said he could not believe that theyd gotten away with it. Jaycee was scared.
The next thing she remembered was the car stopping. The man said they were home. He threw the blanket back over Jaycees head and warned her to keep quiet; otherwise, she would disturb his very aggressive dogs. Inside, he zapped her with his stun gun again. Then he took her to the bathroom and made her take her clothes off. He stripped off as well and asked whether she had ever seen a naked man before. Jaycee said she hadnt and was very afraid.
He made her touch him, then forced her to take a shower with him while he shaved what little hair she had in her armpits and around her pubic region. She cried. He offered to comfort her, but she did not want that. She said that, while her family did not have much money, they would pay to get her back. Then he wrapped her in a towel and, putting her back under a blanket, led her out into the back garden. When he took the blanket off, she found herself in a small room with carpet under her feet. There were blankets and egg crates he said she could use as a bed. As Jaycee stood shaking with fatigue from her ordeal, the man said he would come back later. He handcuffed her and warned her to keep quiet, and he locked the door behind him as he left. Jaycee cried herself to sleep. She was still crying when she woke up the following morning. She worried whether she would be in trouble at school and whether her parents were out looking for her.
