Birth Certificate: Jaycee Lee Dugard
Birth Date: May 3, 1980 (Age 29)
Birth place: Garden Grove, California
Home town: South Lake Tahoe, California
Children: Angel (1994) and Starlit (November, 1998)
Mother: Terry Probyn
Family members: Carl Probyn (Stepfather 1999), Tina Dugard (Aunt)
Half-sister: Shayna Probyn, 1990
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In this section, we built our narratives about the development Jaycee Dugard from the time she was incarcerated in the backyard garden. The OIC report stated that she spent the first year and half of her captivity in the sound-proofed shed. We then leap-frog to the recent present till her recovery. Our narratives will try and capture her state of mind then.
Length of Captivity
At the time of her recovery, she had been with the Garridos for 18 years. In order to put some perspective on her captivity, she was kidnapped when George H W Bush was still the President of the United States in 1991. Bill Clinton became the 42nd US president in January 1992 and served two terms. By the end of the Clinton presidency in 2000, she was aged 20 with 2 children fathered by her kidnapper, Phillip Garrido. She lived through another two terms of the George W Bush presidency from 2001 till 2008 and was only recovered on August 26 2009 during the Obama presidency. Her captivity had spanned four presidencies.
From a young girl to womanhood
At the age of 11, she would have been going through a developmental phase. Under normal circumstance, from ages 11 through 14, she would have developed physically, cognitively, emotionally/social and physiologically. She would have gone through a phase of clumsiness and her brain would have adjusted to her longer limbs and bigger body.
By the mid-teens, the brain's reward centre, the parts involved in emotional arousal, should have been well-developed making her more vulnerable to peer pressure. Did it happen for Alyssa? It would not be till the early 20s that her brain's frontal cortex, where reasoning connects with emotion, enabling her to weigh consequences, had finished forming. But unfortunately for Jaycee, these development did not take place to their full potential and if they did, it was skewed due to the trauma and stress of the captivity.
At an age when children from her age group would be participating in school activities such as plays, music lessons, sports activities and going off on school trips and tramping, Jaycee was held in the backyard compound of her captors. These are activities that shape the physical and mental well-being of children as they grow into young adults. These are the activities that shape personalities and social attitudes besides the social interaction at school and at home. These are formative years in a young adult. Instead, during those early years of captivity, her personality was formed by her interaction with her captors. Sex was the main interaction with her captors and Phillip Garrido made sure he had plenty. They had all the time in the world to play with her mind and her body.
From recent news report, we know that she was subjected to brain washing.
The 29 year old woman that identified herself as Jaycee Dugard at the parole office had an emotional age of 11. During her 18 years in captivity, she was most unlikely to have handled money or learn to drive or do the most ordinary things that most young women of her age group would have done. The basic pleasure of having one's own freedom to interact with society at large. Most of all she missed out on an education which would have taken her to college. Such was her isolation from society. During her captivity, she had been conditioned to accept her situation and she had built her world around it. The whole world was that backyard compound, the 2 younger girls and the Garridos. And of course, her interaction with the outside world was customers through her job as the graphic designer for the printing business, Print for Less and in the later years, as a prostitute. Also in the later years, she did venture out more accompanied by Phillip Garrido and the 2 younger girls to Savemart, shops, movies and the library. They had also been to the beach during the summer of 2009.
Was she taken to a hairdresser for her hair to be done? From the photos in People and Hello magazine since her recovery, it did look like she had a professional hairdresser. Phillip Garrido would have make sure that she lived out his sexual fantasy of a temptress with longer than shoulder-lengthed curvy hair. She was God's Desire and had to look the part. He was God in that backyard compound.
In that backyard compound, she did not own her body. She had limited knowledge of the outside world and towards the latter part of the captivity, she did have access to emails and Internet. The only relationship she was allowed to form was with her captors. Even her children knew her as their older sister.
Something that was striking was the children were very conscious of her age. During the visit to the University of California, Starlit brought it up about her older sister. It must have been something that Alyssa must have discussed with the 2 younger girls frequently.
Society Guide Posts
Rape and Slavery
From the time of her captivity, she was repetitively raped. At the end of the first year of captivity, she was given a new identity, Alyssa. She was adopted by Phillip Garrido as his wife. In the solitary confinement in that sound-proofed shed, through physical deprivation, verbal and physical abuse and repeated rapes, she was conditioned to submit herself to the will of her captors. Then, was she permitted some freedom in the backyard garden. At the age of 12 when her school friends were in their 6th grade, Alyssa started her new life as a sex slave.
The later years - 2004 onwards?
18 years is a long time. That's the length of her captivity. From the photo of the bookshelf in her tent at the back of the garden, and the titles of the books, we concluded that the romance books were read by Alyssa and the psycho-horror and psycho-terror, science fiction books were read by Phillip Garrido.
It was a constant theme of love between an alluring beauty and a strong willed man. A romance fantasy. She was the Plain Jane with the hidden beauty, an alluring beauty. And her man, Phillip Garrido was that devastating blue-eyed man. He was a man that knew what he wanted and he wasn't leaving until he got it. Ruggedly handsome, charming, and undeniably charismatic, he was the kind of man that she found irresistible...the kind of man she was certain would never look twice at a woman as ordinary as her.
The beauty of their friendship allowed them to discuss everything, just as best friends would. All of that would change when they stood like statues staring down at the king-size mattress.
From dusk until dawn the two experienced passion, seduction, and deep revelation where the past did not matter and the future was the next orgasm. It was an idyllic existence living in a permanent oxytocin haze of sensual pleasure and orgasmic copulation.
In Do With Me What You Will, Alyssa fills the role of Elena. It is a love story that concentrates upon the tension between two American 'pathways' : the way of tradition, or Law; and the way of spontaneous emotion-in this case, Love. In the synthesis of these two apparently contradictory forces lies the inevitable transformation of our culture.
"Romantic love is one of our Western religions and must be respected as such; it must be acknowledged as the violent, unstoppable, rather beautiful force it is. But the West is also a culture of Law : American society will never be transformed by stray acts of violence in the streets-it will be transformed only through the courts. And they, in turn, will not be transformed until the men who run them are changed, individual by individual. Ours is still a time of romantic love; the time of a more communal, transcendental love is not yet come. DO WITH ME WHAT YOU WILL suggests such a transformation.
"If what is available to an individual is romantic love, then it must be-it will be-this kind of love that liberates." In the "freeing" from the enchantment of her "self," Elena lives a drama in which, by a continual process, she is raised to a higher aspect of her own being through involvement with a man-a drama of marriage and adultery that constructs an hour-by-hour, thought-by-thought experience both shattering and redemptive."
Another critic Rose Marie Burwell states: "Certain that the law will not save her, that the very concepts of innocence and guilt depend on the human propensities of those who define and dispense justice, Elena recognizes the truth that "Necessity Makes Law." Assuming moral self-responsibility in the final chapter, Elena Howe enters an unspoken plea of nolo contendre, the vulgate of which is the title of the novel, Do With Me What You Will ( 1973 ). The plea, in English common law and in most states, requires the court to proceed on an assumption of the defendant's innocence--even though he refuses to defend himself. Here the reader is the court and Elena Howe is both Everyman and many women. The dilemma she has been chosen to exemplify, the struggle to create and retain a tenable sense of self, is a universal one in which every individual who achieves emotional and moral maturity participates. For Elena a belated and violent sexual awakening sounds a warning signal, forcing upon her the realization that she must synthesize her personality or accede to her own disintegration. Elena's resistance and the Jungian stages of her individuation provide the narrative structure of novel. "
Bonding - Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response in which kidnap victims begin to show sympathy for their abductors. It was named after a robbery in Sweden in which hostages became emotionally attached to their captors. This term often is used as an explanation for why people who are exposed to intermittent kindness by their captor, kindness that is experienced within the context of a life and death situation, became emotionally dependent on their captor. It is a situation in which the captive(s) who are intimidated, controlled, or made to suffer, begin to love, admire, and even sexually desire their controllers or captors.
Post captivity, Jaycee Dugard exhibited extreme Stockholm Syndrome. That could be due to the early age of her captivity and also the duration of that captivity which was 18 years. There could be 3 distinct phase in her bonding with her captors.
In the earlier years, she would have bonded purely for survival and the hope that her physical, verbal and mental abuse would lessened. She looked for compassion from her tormentors. Those were the early years of captivity when she had to endure the abuse, humiliation and the brutality of her repeated rapes. It was a survival reflex that is part of our human instinct.
The subsequent years of her bonding with her captors would be when she was pregnant with her first child. She gave birth to Angel at age 14 (1994). Four years (1998) later at age 18, she gave birth to Starlit. Face with having a child of her rapist, she reconciled the conflict within herself that her rapist was also the father of her child. The psychological term for this is called cognitive dissonance. It is a survival skill where she denied and suppressed the conflicting thoughts of her rapist and instead focused on him being the father of her children and raising them together as family with her rapist/captors. The cognitive dissonance suppressed the negative thoughts and focused on the well-being of her immediate family.
During pregnancy, Alyssa would be experiencing extreme emotional highs and lows due to hormonal changes in her body. The internal conflict she would have experienced in being pregnant with the baby of her rapist. That would be the ultimate in psychological degradation.
Perhaps some time in 2004, she bonded with her captors at the sexual level. She was 24 years old and the 2 girls were 6 and 10 years old. Before, she just went along with the sexual intercourse with Phillip Garrido. He managed to connect with Alyssa sexually. Her mental and psychological conditioning was completed.
In Phillip Garrido's writing "Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed", there was this passage
"Finally one day when we were having intercourse and I ejaculated and in great anger I never needed to act or do the things I used to do believe was so great and stimulating. At the same moment I began explaining how my relationship with her was all I ever needed and at that moment I knew and felt what must be the greatest freedom of them all because I was able to see myself as wanting those things only! I began to weep telling her "I am so sorry for the things I did in the past" at that time a feeling of remorse came over me, one that I never (k)new or felt before or even dreamed was possible"
Several things could be deduced from the passage. The wife he was having intercourse would be his young wife as he made reference to his remorse for his past wrongdoings. We can imagine this scene with him and her crying and Alyssa consoling him. She forgave him for whatever he had done to her as it is the Christian thing to do.
This moment after his ejaculation became a religious experience for both. For him to be remorseful and seek forgiveness and for her, a sense of power to grant that forgiveness and the uplifting experience that goes with it. The powerful emotional experience of orgasm, the Hieros Gamos moment, the warmth after sex glow which bonded their emotions. And they copulated further to seal the new bond.
Oxytocin was the hormone the gave that wonderful feeling during orgasm. It is called the love hormone for that reason. In the incident described above by Phillip Garrido, oxytocin was the hormone that bonded them together during their sexual orgasm.
At this stage of her life, she saw herself as part of his family. They were raising their children together as a family. His struggle became her struggle as well. She was no more a victim but part of him. It was her full commitment to him, her body and her soul.
Feedback Loop - Sex Addiction
Sex Addiction is an umbrella term which is also known as Intimacy Disorder.
Sex addiction in women is very much like sex addiction in men. there are some different presentation. one of the misconception about this term sex addiction that skewed our thinking about it is that we like to separate sex addict versus love or relationship addict but ultimately the dynamics are all the same. the best way to conceptualised it is that sex addiction is an umbrella term. there will be different flavours love or relationship addicts ie. going from man to man to man or partner to partner to partner. sure woman do that but woman also uses visual pornography, masturbation to anonymous kind of sex. all of these are part of sex addiction. the label is so awful especially for women that we react against it. we kind of like a softer term. it is the wrong term to start with. it isn't about sex. it is about things that are much deeper. the proper term should be intimacy disorder. but sex addiction is the one that we are stuck with. women frequently are romance addict .
sex addiction isn't about sex at all. our sexual behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg. the top of the iceberg that covers a whole host of problems underneath. for many of us, those problems include abuse. many many people who struggles with sex addiction are untreated sexual trauma survivors. we know that in our culture today, at least 1 out of 3 females, 1 out of 5 males, are going to be sexually abused by the time she or he reaches 18 years old. An epidemic is everywhere and another topic especially one within the church that we are not talking about. so many many people struggles with the aftereffects of sexual abuse earlier in their history, in their childhood. and why does that make such a difference? because like nothing else sexual abuse confuses that line between sex and love, between sex and violence, between sex and fear, between sex and survival . sometimes have to be sexual with this person this parent because this is the one that is taking care of me and my survival depends on remaining in relationship with this person. it is enormously confusing.
Road Ahead - What the Psychologists Are Saying
As we begin to learn more about the way Jaycee Dugard and her children lived -- in a series of ramshackle tents and sheds amid squalor -- one can only imagine how Dugard will be able to re-integrate back into society.
"It's been suggested that there's been signs of Stockholm Syndrome, that she may be feeling loyalty, perhaps even guilt and that makes it all the more difficult. It also means it's going to require very serious therapy [and] intervention," said psychologist John Lutzker, Ph.D., director for the Center for Healthy Development at Georgia State University. "In addition to therapy, simply spending a lot of time with her family would be useful to help this process move along."
Ernie Allen, the president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said on "Good Morning America" today that it isn't surprising that Dugard was reportedly working for Garrido and had access to a computer and telephone during her captivity.
"I think if ever there's an example [of Stockholm Syndrome]…this is it," said Allen, whose organization helped find a psychologist to work with Dugard and her family. "This child was abducted when she was 11. She was terrorized, she was abused. The mind can only take so much anger, rage and fear, and small kindnesses cause these victims to identify with their captors."
"This happens with adults," he added. "First and foremost, what Jaycee did was figure out how to survive."
Mental health experts have few examples to guide them in dealing with extreme kidnapping cases such as this one.
He said it's also important for Dugard to play a role in her daughters' healing.
"Their captor who had limited their access to the world… but this was dad," he said. "It's important again to reinforce with them that they've done nothing wrong. Jaycee will play a key role in this. It's going to take patience and time to help these children catch up."
Dugard's step-father told "GMA" Monday that she was experiencing feelings of guilt. Allen said that's not unusual for kidnapping victims.
"It is a slow, patient process, but first you reintroduce Jaycee to her parents," he said. "You emphasize the importance of unconditional love."
"I'm sure there's so many emotions complicated by the fact she has two young daughters," Craig Akers said. "I'm sure that she's confused and uncertain, probably wondering if people are going to blame her."
"We have to make sure they love her no matter what," he added. "She has to know what happened wasn't her fault. You have to make sure she has no thoughts like that at all...she's not responsible for any of it."
"We're very grateful we have this opp to send a message of hope to families that have children out there," Craig Akers said. "There are more people like this…some perhaps in a situation like Jaycee.. We want to get our message out there that it's ok...your family loves you no matter what."
Sources
Former hostage says daughters not harmed - Dugard told police Phillip Garrido had not touched her in years
For Long Term Captives, A Complex Road Home - NY Times
Long Road Back After Kidnapping - ABC News
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