"You are going to be completely impressed...I turned my life completely around and to be able to understand that, you have to start there."
In 1991 Jaycee Lee Dugard was an 11-year-old girl on the way to her bus stop when she was abducted by Phillip Garrido and his wife (by their own admission). Until this week Jaycee's family was left to wonder what became of her. I'll save you some math and tell you that Jaycee is now 29 years old. She spent the last 18 years in captivity, being held in Garrido's back yard. She bore him two children, now ages 11 and 15, who have never been to school, never been to a doctor.
How many rapes can one endure before it forever changes who they are and how they view the world? And, suppose that happens to an 11-year-old, after having been taken from her family and life. Suppose she endures years of this abuse while living in her abductor's backyard, bearing not one but two children by her rapist when she is just a child herself. She gets no formal education. Can she ever get back what was taken from her? Her sense of safety, her childhood, her innocence, her education, her family?
What did it do to her family who watched from their yard as she was kidnapped? Her stepfather was viewed as suspect until this week when Jaycee resurfaced. The marriage did not survive. Jaycee's mother reportedly cried for a week every year on the anniversary of the kidnapping of her beautiful young daughter.
So when Garrido says "You are going to be completely impressed...I turned my life completely around and to be able to understand that, you have to start there," I say no to infinity. I am not impressed. I don't care if he turned his life around. I will never understand his selfish and obscene actions.
He cannot ever make right what he has made wrong. He cannot return what he stole from Jaycee and her family.
