PLACERVILLE, Calif. — At times, the voice is young and terrified — an 11-year-old girl who was kidnapped during the last week of school, raped for years and kept in line under threat of pain.
At times, the voice is brave and resilient — a mother protecting her vulnerable daughters, struggling to give them a normal life under the most horrific of circumstances.
And at times, it is angry and defiant — a survivor facing down her abusers.
Always, though, the voice is Jaycee Lee Dugard’s. On Thursday, it was heard loud and clear for the first time since she was abducted 20 years ago while heading to the bus stop.
Revealing the child she was and the woman she has become, Dugard’s voice rang out — even though she wasn’t present — in Department 7 of El Dorado County Superior Court, where Phillip and Nancy Garrido were sentenced Thursday for kidnapping and rape, and in the unsealed transcript of the secret grand jury hearing that led to the couple’s 2010 indictment.
Dugard’s statement, read by her mother at the sentencing, and the 123 pages of transcript are the first windows into the life of a young woman who was held in captivity for 18 years and gave birth to two daughters by the man who raped her.
“Phillip wanted us to be a family,” Dugard testified. “He was our dad, and Nancy was their mom. You know, that’s what we did . . . to give the kids, you know, normal as possible (a life).”
On June 10, 1991, the Garridos were driving in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., when they spied Jaycee, heading up the hill for her school bus. She was 11 and had just yelled goodbye to her stepfather, who was in their garage. It was about 7:30 a.m.
The Garridos’ car “creeped up” behind the girl. A voice called out, asking for directions. “And then,” Dugard testified, “all of a sudden his hand shoots out and I feel tingly and like losing control, and I’m in the bushes, trying to go back, and somebody is dragging me.”
The couple had hatched plans to go “shopping for a victim,” said Superior Court Judge Douglas C. Phimister in court Thursday, and they were equipped with blankets and a Taser. Phillip Garrido, who was driving, shocked Jaycee, and Nancy dragged her into the car.
The Garridos took Jaycee back to the ramshackle warren of tents and sheds they had constructed behind their house in Antioch, northeast of Oakland. Garrido raped her on arrival.
“I was very scared,” Dugard testified. “I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know why he was doing this. I just wanted to go home.”
The Garridos gave her “Barbie stuff” during her first birthday in captivity. Garrido gave her a cat to keep her company, but he took it away because it messed up the small space where he kept her prisoner.
For the first three years, until the birth of her first daughter in August 1994, Garrido would force himself on Jaycee once a week or more. After the birth of the child, the frequency of the rapes slowed. Nancy, who would take Jaycee food, offered to have sex with her husband instead. She would say, “Oh, I’ll take this run for you.”
After the first birth, “things really changed,” Dugard testified. “He said that he was eventually going to stop having sex with me and that, you know, he’s just really trying to change and he wants us all to be a family.”
The last time Garrido raped Dugard was the day her second daughter was conceived. That child was born in November 1997. The Garridos let Dugard pick a name. She chose Alissa.
Dugard told the grand jury that she did what she could to give her children a normal life. But there wasn’t much that she could do. There were Doberman pinschers on the property, Garrido told her, and they were vicious.
