Jaycee Dugard Diary: Prosecutors Hope Passages Lead to Restraining Order

Expert says heartbreaking passages show need for long-term therapy.

ByABC News via logo
February 12, 2010, 7:42 AM

Feb. 12, 2010— -- The words were heartbreaking: a young girl pleading in her journal for her freedom after enduring years of sexual and psychological abuse.

Six years before Jaycee Dugard was freed from the backyard prison where she had been kept for 18 years, she wrote, "How can I ever tell him I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please ... free to say I have a family."

But now that Dugard, 29, is free of Phillip Garrido, the registered sex offender charged in her kidnapping and abuse, authorities say he has been persistent in continuing his attempts to influence her.

Former FBI agent and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said it doesn't surprise him that the man who spent nearly two decades crafting a relationship of dependency and fear would have had a plan to control his alleged victim even if they were separated.

"Two things happen. He creates dependency and control. That's how he was successful in keeping her for 18 years in one location," Garrett told "Good Morning America" today.

"Apparently, he had told her that if ... he gets arrested at some point ... she should hire an attorney and that attorney could communicate directly with him."

Garrido is accused of using the legal system to stay in contact with Dugard and has demanded that prosecutors make her secret location public.

But Garrido's lawyer, Susan Gellman, said she's simply doing her job in trying to learn as much about Dugard as possible to protect her client.

"In terms of our motion to disclose where Ms. Dugard is located, she is, of course, welcome to not speak to us," Gellman said.

Dugard has been said to be prepared to testify against her former captors -- Garrido's wife, Nancy Garrido, has also been charged -- but Garrett said her journal entries show at least some connection to Garrido that may still linger.

"I will never cause him pain if it's in my power to prevent it," she wrote in September 2003.

Like other kidnapping victims who have formed attachments to their captors, Dugard's seemingly conflicting feelings of being trapped yet not wanting to hurt Garrido are typical.

"It will take a lot of therapy to break through that," Garrett said.

Jaycee Dugard Diary: 'It Feels Like I'm Sinking'

The district attorney released several quotes from Dugard's private journal in hopes of showing Garrido's mind control over his alleged victim.

"It feels like I'm sinking. ... This is supposed to be my life to do with what I like ... but once again he has taken it away," Dugard wrote in an entry dated July 5, 2004. "How many times is he allowed to take it away from me? I am afraid he doesn't see how the things he says makes me a prisoner."

In light of Garrido's recent efforts to expose the location where Dugard and the two children he purportedly fathered with her have been staying since she was rescued last summer, the district attorney has asked for a court order preventing him from having any contact with them.

Dugard was kidnapped in broad daylight in 1991 at age 11. Her stepfather tried chasing the car down the street after hearing her scream, but she was never seen again until August.

The life Garrido had made for his alleged victim -- 18 years in a backyard lair of tents and sheds with no access to school or medical care -- came crashing down when his unusual behavior at a California college campus with Dugard's daughters tipped off campus police.

For her part, Dugard is further attempting to distance herself from her former captor. She has decided to rename her daughters, changing the names Angel and Starlit that Garrido chose for them.