8-4-2011 California:
With the Phillip Garrido fiasco as a backdrop, legislative and law enforcement leaders agreed Wednesday to work toward preventing a similar one.
In a meeting at the Capitol convened by state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, and El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, officials discussed the failures that led to Jaycee Lee Dugard remaining captive for 18 years and offered ideas on how to improve supervision of sex offenders. .......
Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991, and was found alive in August 2009.
Various investigations have determined that federal – and later state – parole agents failed in their supervision of Garrido, who had a lengthy criminal history and was on parole for a 1976 kidnapping and rape when he and his wife, Nancy, abducted Dugard.
Lee Seale, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's internal oversight division, said that as soon as Dugard was discovered alive, his department launched two internal probes of how agents missed her presence on the Garridos' Antioch property.
Both probes found "serious shortcomings," Seale said, adding that the department is working to improve its supervision of sex offenders.
There was little dispute that there had been a massive series of failures to detect Dugard's presence as a captive. Pierson, who won guilty pleas from the Garridos in April, noted that the public may never know the full extent of his crimes.
He said Garrido told investigators earlier this year that he had committed other abductions, as well as dozens of date rapes.
Garrido claimed he had never killed anyone, but made it clear that he had no problem lying to authorities if he didn't want them to know about some crimes.
"He was fairly proud of that," Pierson said. ..Source.. by Sam Stanton
August 4, 2011
Dugard case prompts effort to improve sex offender supervision
August 28, 2010
Are sex offenders the bait, to get public attention?
8-28-2010 California:
I am sure folks have heard of what Gov. Schwarzenegger is doing to notify the public when paroled sex offenders do not comply with GPS monitoring. Two of many news reports follows, but there is something most folks do not realize, see my commentary following news reports.California to notify public if sex offenders flee
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is ordering corrections officials to alert the public when a sex offender parolee slips away from supervision.
The order Wednesday follows recent incidents in Bakersfield and San Diego County. Parolees there are charged with attacking teenage girls after the felons discarded GPS-linked ankle bracelets that track their movements. Corrections spokesman Gordon Hinkle says the department already notifies law enforcement agencies when parolees disappear.
Hinkle says the department is likely to follow Schwarzenegger's order by posting information about the missing parolees on a public website. He says between 20 and 60 parolees flee in a typical month. He could not immediately say how many of the missing parolees were convicted of sex offenses. ..Source.. by Mercury News.com
New California Website Warns Public When Sex Offenders Bolt
A site to warn the public when sex-offender parolees remove GPS ankle monitors has been created by the California Department of Corrections, according to a statement by the department.
Member of the public can sign up to get email alerts about the parolee violations. Information such as photos, physical descriptions and last known whereabouts are all included in the alerts. The site was created after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger directed the department to notify law enforcement and the media if an offender escapes confinement. Alerts will be updated within hours of the issuance of a warrant.
Law enforcement agencies are already notified by the Department of Justice's Criminal Intelligence and Investigation system alerts. Offender information is located in the Parole Law Enforcement Automated Database System. Those wishing to sign up for the alerts can go to the department's website. ..Source.. by Steve La
All the news is about sex offenders and they are the reason this was all started, right? Lets see, first at the California DOC website it shows the list of parolees who are not complying, see DOC Website, then come back for the real story.
The website is all about sex offenders?
California DOC touts sex offenders, sex offenders, but the truth is that website contains far more than sex offenders. Want proof? There is a "Search Box" in the upper right of that page, put in any of the following: Robbery, Spouse, Ammo, Violence and I am sure there are others, and see what is returned.
Ahh, you found out the truth, its not all about sex offenders, it really is all about parolees who do not comply with GPS Monitoring. So why are they blaming sex offenders? That I have no answer to, and will leave that up to your imagination. Hint, sex sells, and will get the public attention.
Now, for those who will claim, that, those you find that do not indicate they are a sex offender, maybe are really sex offenders? Ok, its possible, but then why would the DOC give out such info to the public and not tell the public about the person being a sex offender? No folks those are other parolees who are not complying with GPS requirements.
Did they appropriate funds for this project?
Lets see, did they appropriate money to setup this website? Again, I do not know, but I do know something about the website, click on this link.
OK, did you notice it is the same information as the DOC link, without the DOC Titles? Yup, they setup the website using a simple FREE Google blog. Want proof? Click on RSS and it will take you back to the DOC website. Folks, I just happenstanced on this and did a bit of research.
Is the information correct?
Lets do a little test, in the search box type in "Taylor" without the quotes, and click search. On the left side it will show two parolees, now carefully do this, open each one, and their detail information will be as follows:
So, the public is going to look for a guy who is 5'10" 190 lbs -OR- a guy who is 6'2" and 230 lbs? And both descriptions show the same name, Richard Leslie Taylor. OH, you also noticed the pictures were of different people? OH yes, also one is a sex offender and the other convicted of robbery. And the title of the post is DIFFERENT??
I seriously doubt Jaycee Dugard, the girl kidnapped by Phillip Garrido -a California parolee- and kept her some 18 years in his backyard, would support these efforts of the California DOC. Should the general public?
For now have a great day and a better tomorrow.
eAdvocate
PS: Wouldn't it be simple to have someone verify what was posted, to see if it is correct? Since it involves public safety. No one thought of it, well they also never checked Phillip Garrido's electric cords going from his house to the hidden shacks in his backyard, where he kept Jaycee Dugard for 18 years, either. In God we trust, but the California DOC, we better double check.
July 1, 2010
US lawmakers approve $20 million settlement with family of woman held captive for 18 years
7-1-2010 California:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers approved a $20 million settlement Thursday with the family of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped as a girl and held captive in a secret backyard for 18 years by a paroled sex offender.
Dugard, 30, resurfaced last August with two daughters she bore with Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist.
Dugard, her mother and daughters filed claims in February saying state officials with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to do their jobs. Parole agents began supervising Garrido in 1999 but failed to discover Dugard.
The Dugard family members claimed psychological, physical and emotional damages.
"I can't emphasize enough that we've got to be much more prudent in terms of how we provide oversight for released prisoners in the state of California," Assemblyman Ted Gaines said.
Attorneys for the Dugards did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.
Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have pleaded not guilty to charges that they kidnapped and raped the young woman.
Dugard and her children were hidden at the Garrido home in the eastern San Francisco Bay area city of Antioch, authorities said.
"Jaycee and her children, now 13 and 16, are now living in seclusion and will need many years of therapy, education and health care," said Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes. ..Source... by Don Thompson
February 26, 2010
Jaycee Dugard May Sue California Department of Correction
2-26-2010 California:
Nancy and Phillip Garrido Head to Court on Motion to Meet as 'Family'
Jaycee Dugard has filed documents suggesting she may sue the state of California claiming that state "lapses" allowed convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy to kidnap her as a child and hold her prisoner for 18 years.
Dugardfiled her notice of claim against the California Department of Correction. Her mother Terry Probyn and two minor children she bore to Garrido during her captivity have filed similar claims.
Dugard's lawsuit, according to The Associated Press, does not specify the amount of damages being sought except to say that it is in excess of $25,000.
Dugard's spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer, told the AP that the family members haven't decided whether they'll file a lawsuit.
"We are simply preserving Jaycee Dugard's right to file a lawsuit at a later date, if that is something she decides is in her family's best interest," Seltzer said
Dugard was kidnapped in 1991 at age 11, and held captive in a warren of shacks and tents in Garrido's back yard for nearly two decades.
As a registered sex offender with a violent history, Garrido was not allowed to be around children, but corrections department officials who were responsible by keeping tabs on Garrido never noticed Dugard's presence and later never questioned the presence of two young girls at Garrido's house.
The claims became public on the same day that Phillip and Nancy Garrido were scheduled to appear in court for a judge to consider two motions prosecutors have slammed as outlandish.
The couple has requested to meet with each other in jail to discuss "family" issues and Phillip Garrido's attorney has filed a motion to force prosecutors into revealing the secret location where Dugard and her daughters have been living since their rescue last August.
Garridos' "Family" Requests Slammed by Prosecutors
Prosecutors have slammed both requests. The request of the Garridos for a jailhouse meeting was quickly pounced on by El Dorado County Sheriff Fred Kollar.
"The psuedo-family the Garridos want to discuss was created by the kidnap, false imprisonment and multiple rapes of a young girl, producing two children," the sheriff state in court documents opposing the Garridos' request.
"While it may be argued that a restoration of family values would improve the quality of American life in general, the assertion of family rights in a case where the 'family' was the produce of 29 alleged felonies is astonishing," the sheriff continued.
In the conclusion to the papers filed on behalf of the sheriff, Kollar states that "Garridos' invocation of the sanctity of 'family' is breathtaking in its audacity."
Among the concerns outlined in the sheriff's rebuttal are the discussion of escape plans, creation of phony testimony and plans by one inmate to coerce or control the other.
"The essence of being in jail is that you don't get to visit whoever you please, under the conditions you might prefer," the sheriff's motion read.
Prosecutors and the defense have been tight-lipped about the case as it inches forward in the courts, but a series of filings and tactics have made public a complicatedlegal tug-of-war.
Earlier this month, prosecutors released portions of a diary Dugard kept during the 18 years she was allegedly imprisoned in the Garridos' backyard in hopes of persuading the judge to keep Dugard's current location a secret in the face of Phillip Garrido's attempts to find her from jail.
The words were heartbreaking. Six years before Dugard was freed from the backyard prison, 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
Jaycee Dugard's Plea to Be Free
"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 another 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."
The district attorney has asked for a court order preventing the Garridos from having contact with her or her family. ..Source.. SARAH NETTER
November 7, 2009
CA- Questioning of Dugard, Garrido detailed
11-7-2009 California:
John Simerman, Contra Costa Times
Jaycee Dugard hid her identity, lied, refused to answer questions and asked for a lawyer as a parole agent probed her relationship with Phillip Garrido during the Aug. 26 meeting in Concord that prompted the arrests of Garrido and his wife.
Ultimately it was Garrido, questioned separately, who admitted he had raped and kidnapped Dugard and that he was the girls' father. Only later did the woman who went by "Alyssa" reveal herself, according to a report this week by the state Inspector General's Office.
The report, a lashing review of mistakes and missed chances by state parole agents over the past 11 years, sheds new light on how Garrido's parole agent and Concord police discovered an 18-year mystery, tipped off by two UC Berkeley officials.
The UC officials, including a campus police officer, grew wary when Garrido showed up Aug. 25 with two girls, seeking an event permit and spewing religious ramblings. The officer ran a background check, found Garrido was a registered sex offender and tracked down his parole agent.
Later that day, two parole agents drove to Garrido's home near Antioch, handcuffed him and searched the house, the report says. They found only Garrido's wife, Nancy, and his elderly mother. On a drive to the parole office, Garrido said the two girls "were the daughters of a relative and that he had permission from their parents to take them to the university."
A month earlier, parole officials had attached a new condition to Garrido's lifetime parole from his Nevada conviction for the 1976 rape of a woman he kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe, the report says. He was now barred from being around minors. But the parole agent and his supervisor looked past the new condition, drove him home and ordered him to report back to the office the next day, the report says.
His parole agent was on the phone with the UC officer when the Garridos showed up the next day with Dugard and the two girls in tow. The UC officer said the girls called him "daddy." The parole agent believed Garrido had no young children. He separated Garrido from the women and girls.
Alyssa said she was their mother.
"The parole agent believed that Alyssa looked too young to be the mother and asked her age. Alyssa said that she was 29 years old, laughingly explaining that she often gets that comment and that people believe she is the girls' sister," the report says.
She and Nancy Garrido became "agitated" under questioning. Alyssa said she knew Garrido had taken the girls to the Berkeley campus and also knew he was a paroled sex offender who had kidnapped and raped a woman.
"She added that Garrido was a changed man and a great person who was good to her kids," the report says. "Alyssa subsequently stated that she didn't want to provide any additional information and that she might need a lawyer."
No personal data
Separately, Garrido told a parole agent that the girls were his nieces, all of them daughters of his brother in Oakley. "Garrido stated that the parents were divorced, the girls were living with them and other people, and he did not know his brother's address or phone number."
The parole agent insisted on identification from Alyssa. She told him she "had learned a long time ago not to carry or give any personal information to anyone." She also said she needed a lawyer.
The parole agent called in Concord police.
"As they waited for the officer to arrive, Alyssa said she was sorry that she had lied. She explained that she was from Minnesota and had been hiding for five years from an abusive husband," the report says. "She was terrified of being found, she said, and that was the reason she could not give the parole agent any information."
Garrido finally admitted to a Concord officer that he had kidnapped and raped Alyssa, the report says. Dugard revealed her identity and "confirmed that she had been kidnapped and raped by Garrido."
'Survival skill'
Concord police Lt. Jim Lardieri declined to comment on the report. McGregor Scott, a former U.S. attorney who represents Dugard, did not return a call Thursday. Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, told People magazine that the two girls, now 11 and 15, thought Dugard was their sister.
There is no evidence to suggest Dugard ever tried to escape the Walnut Avenue house where she and her two girls lived in a hidden backyard lair of tents, sheds and outbuildings, authorities say.
Her attempts to hide her true identity come as no surprise, said Katherine van Wormer, a social work professor at the University of Northern Iowa who has written about Dugard and other kidnap victims.
"After so many years of psyching themselves up, it's sort of like a denial. It's a survival skill. It becomes second nature," she said. "You shut off the part of your mind that would cause you to think in a disloyal way. And you go along.
"I call it 'traumatic bonding.' They really love these people," van Wormer added. "Maybe there is some element of protectiveness there, and a lack of judgment. It's just not rational, but she kept on doing it." ..Source..
November 6, 2009
CA- Jaycee Lee Dugard showed signs of Stockholm syndrome
11-6-2009 California:
Jaycee Lee Dugard showed signs of Stockholm syndrome when she was found after 18 years in captivity, according to an official report by California's inspector general.
When first interviewed by parole officers who were suspicious of her alleged abductor Phillip Garrido she did not reveal her identity.
Instead, she told investigators she was a battered wife from Minnesota who was hiding from her abusive husband, and described Garrido as a "great person" who was "good with her kids".
Miss Dugard, who called herself "Alyssa", told interviewers she was aware Garrido was a convicted sex offender but that he was a "changed man". Only after Garrido admitted he had kidnapped and raped her did she identify herself as Jaycee Dugard, the report said.
Since her release and being reunited with her family Miss Dugard has indicated she will testify against Garrido and his wife Nancy who are charged with her abduction and rape.
McGregor Scott, a lawyer hired by her family, said: "Miss Dugard is fully committed to working with law enforcement to ensure Mr Garrido is held accountable for his crimes."
The report by inspector general David Shaw also listed a catalogue of mistakes by parole officers assigned to monitor Garrido which prolonged Miss Dugard's imprisonment.
Garrido is accused of kidnapping Miss Dugard in 1991, when she was 11. Three years earlier, he had been released from prison after serving only 11 years of a 50-year sentence for rape.
Mr Shaw said: "We determined that Garrido was only properly supervised 12 out of 123 months, a failure rate of 90 per cent." Parole officers failed to interview Garrido's neighbours in Antioch, California or to investigate utility wires running to a secret backyard compound where Miss Dugard, and the two daughters Garrido fathered by her, are believed to have lived.
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. ..Source.. by Nick Allen in Los Angeles
November 5, 2009
CA- California Official Admits Failure in Jaycee Dugard Case
11-5-2009 California:
Parole Officers Ignored GPS Inconsistencies and Reports of Children on Phillip Garrido's Property
The corrections department official who was slammed in a California state report for failing to properly supervise Jaycee Dugard's accused kidnapper said today his parole agent's workload restricted him to spending only 45 minutes a week on each of his cases.
"Mistakes were made by the department and by this agent," Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told "Good Morning America" today. "Our focus, though, is to make sure each agent has more time in that 45 minutes to focus on GPS tracks."
The scathing report, released Wednesday by the California Office of the Inspector General, said Phillip Garrido's parole officers missed several chances to rescue the now 29-year-old Dugard and the two daughters fathered by the registered sex offender.
Garrido was outfitted with GPS monitoring, according to the report, but parole agents ignored 335 alerts that his device had lost its signal, which Cate blamed on the location of his house and poor reception. Other signals showed Garrido was spending a considerable amount of time in his backyard.
The report also noted that Garrido was paid 60 visits by parole agents in a 10-year period. Even where there were obvious clues that something was amiss in the Garrido household, there was no follow-up.
A neighbor in 1991 -- the year of the kidnapping -- reported seeing a young blond girl in the backyard who said her name was Jaycee. And in 2008 a parole office found a young girl in Garrido's house, a direct violation of his parole, but did nothing.
And Garrido, a man with a violent history of rape and kidnapping, was considered a minimum-level offender when authorities now say he should have been classified as a highly dangerous predator.
California Inspector General David Shaw said his department's review found that Garrido was properly supervised for 12 out of the 123 months he was under California's jurisdiction, a failure rate of 90 percent.
Dugard was found in August, 18 years after her 1991 kidnapping. She was rescued after Garrido, 58, took her two daughters to hand out religious material at the UC Berkeley campus, tipping off two police employees there.
A background check showed that Garrido was a registered sex offender and his nearly two-decades-old crime unraveled when he showed up at a meeting with his parole officer with Dugard and the two girls in tow.
Cate admitted today that if it hadn't been for the UC Berkeley employees, it is "very possible" that Dugard and her daughters would still be in the Garridos' backyard.
Dugard initially protected Garrido when confronted by authorities the day she was rescued, telling them that he was a good man and that she was from Minnesota, hiding from an abusive husband, according to the report.
Dugard and her family did not comment on the specifics of the report but issued a statement on the overall findings.
"The inspector general's report clearly sets out many missed opportunities to bring a much earlier end to the nightmares of Jaycee Dugard and her family," a family spokesperson, who asked not to be identified, told ABCNews.com today, reading from a statement. "We expect that the appropriate authorities will take the necessary action to ensure this never happens again. In addition, Jaycee is fully committed to holding Mr. Garrido accountable for the crimes he has committed."
Garrido and his wife, Nancy, have been charged on 28 counts, including rape and kidnapping. They have pleaded not guilty. Garrido's bond has been set at $30 million.
Report: Parole System Jeopardizes Public Safety
The report also noted several general shortcomings in the system that "transcend parolee Garrido's case and jeopardize public safety."
Among the department's shortcomings in the Garrido case: Failure to adequately classify Garrido, who had a history as a sexually violent predator, and supervise him accordingly.
Failure to obtain key information from federal parole authorities.
Failure to train parole agents to conduct parolee home visits.
Failure to talk to neighbors or local public safety agencies.
Failure to act on information clearly showing Garrido had violated parole terms.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation took charge of Garrido's supervision in 1999 after he was released from federal supervision. Garrido was convicted in the 1970s of raping and kidnapping a California woman.
Recommendations include more training on search techniques to look for clues for potential parole violations or criminal behavior and contacting neighbors for information on parolee behavior.
Shortly after Garrido was arrested in connection with Dugard's rape and kidnapping, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation official hailed the parole agents who had been assigned to Garrido's case, saying that Garrido had complied with his parole conditions and never received a violation.
But the report indicated that while Garrido had never been issued a formal violation from the state of California, he committed several violations in the past several years. The report did not list those specific violations.
The state began investigating the handling of Garrido's supervision "almost immediately" after Dugard was found, Shaw told ABCNews.com in September.
Shaw said it is believed that Garrido had five or six parole supervisors assigned by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in the past 10 years.
The investigation, he said in September, was to see if there had been any misconduct on the part of a state employee and to determine whether improvements could be made to prevent a similar situation from occurring again.
State parole officers and police are known to have paid Garrido and his wife, Nancy, visits to their Antioch, Calif., home. As recently as 2006, an officer with the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office was called to the house on a complaint from a neighbor that there were people living in the backyard.
The officer met with Garrido in his front yard, determined there was no threat and left.
At a press conference in August, Sheriff Warren Rupf took responsibility for the incident and noted that they were not aware of Garrido's sex offender status.
"He did not enter or request to enter the backyard. This is not an acceptable outcome. Organizationally, we should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two," he said at the time. "I cannot change the course of events. But we are beating ourselves up over this and will continue to do so."
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said the 2006 incident was cause in itself for review of communications between the state and local jurisdictions. Garrido's parole officer at the time was never notified of the complaint.
In the weeks after the Garridos' arrest, much of the blame seemed to rest on manpower: overwhelmed police officers and parole officers who have dozens or hundreds of felons to check on in a state that has been besieged by budget shortfalls.
Hinkle said parole officers are assigned to sex offenders on a 40 to 1 ratio statewide, unless the offender has been designated as a "sexually violent" predator, in which case the ratio shrinks to 20 to 1.
Garrido, he said, was not classified as a sexually violent predator.
In addition to the Garrido case, the supervision of sex offenders has come under fire in other states recently, most notably in the case of Cleveland predator Anthony Sowell, a registered sex offender who was charged with murder Saturday. Authorities have so far found 11 bodies hidden in his home.
Sex offenders were also at the forefront of the search for whoever kidnapped and murdered 7-year-old Somer Thompson in northern Florida last month. No arrests have been made in her death.
Jaycee Dugard Relishing Reunion With Family
Dugard, now 29, and her daughters, 11 and 15, have been living with her mother and half-sister in an undisclosed location in Northern California ever since they were reunited. A recent People magazine photo shoot portrayed the young woman, whose hair has darkened from blond to light brown, smiling with her family and happily riding horses.
Dugard was 11 years old when she was snatched off the street near her school bus stop in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Her stepfather, Carl Probyn, heard her screams and chased the car down the street on a bicycle to no avail.
A gray Ford later impounded from Garrido's property matched the description Probyn gave to authorities after Dugard was abducted.
Garrido has also been considered a potential suspect in the disappearances of 9-year-old Michaela Garecht in 1988 and 11-year-old Ilene Misheloff in 1989. Both girls vanished within close proximity of where Garrido was living at the time and in a similar fashion as the Dugard abduction. Michaela was taken in broad daylight in front of a friend.
Searches of the Garridos' property once the Dugard investigators moved out turned up several pieces of bone fragment, but tests later revealed they were too old to have been connected to the disappearance of either girl. ..Source.. by SARAH NETTER
October 15, 2009
CA- First pic of kidnap survivor Jaycee Dugard, 'I'm so happy'
10-15-2009 California:
She was gone for 18 years and no one truly knows or understands what she went through at the hands of a convicted sex offender.
But kidnap survivor Jaycee Dugard has an amazing attitude along with her stunning life story.
"I'm so happy to be back with my family," she told People.
She and her two daughters, Angel, 15 and Starlit, 11, are living with Jaycee's mom Terry Probyn, 50, reports People.
Her captor, Phillip Garrido, is in jail having pled not guilty to charges of kidnapping and other heinous crimes.
Jaycee is not living under the shadow of what happened to her. She is in the kitchen cooking and riding horses.
A spokeswoman for the Dugard family, Erika Schulte, told NBC's "Today" show that the release of the photos was Jaycee's way of saying thank you to the public that has showed so much support.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Jaycee is riding horses as part of her therapy and her daughters are catching up in their schooling, although they were already pretty much up to their grade level when they were found this summer.
People has an extensive interview and collection of family photos in its issue that hits stands Friday. ..Source.. by Kimberley McGee
October 6, 2009
CA- Jaycee Dugard case: Tipster in 1992 reported seeing abducted girl eyeing missing-child flier of herself
10-6-2009 California:
An anonymous caller in 1992 reported seeing a girl he thought was Jaycee Dugard staring at herself on a missing-child flier at an Oakley gas station, then returning to a yellow van, but the tipster disappeared and an area search came up empty, a Contra Costa County sheriff's official said.
The van, which the caller described as possibly a Dodge, could be a match to an old yellow Dodge junker that authorities removed last month from the property of Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, near Antioch.
The tip, which came less than a year after Dugard's 1991 abduction from her South Lake Tahoe street, is among myriad details that El Dorado County prosecutors are gathering as they aim to build a leakproof case against the Garridos, who remain held without bail in a Placerville jail. They face 29 felony counts in Dugard's kidnapping and what authorities call a childhood of sexual bondage while confined to a hidden backyard warren of tents and shacks.
It seems to add little, however, to what authorities already know, said William Clark, chief assistant district attorney for El Dorado County.
"It's not something we've really said is dynamite. We pretty much know where she was in 1992," Clark said. "We've got clairvoyant tips, we got a whole tip line on (the case). To be honest, we're overwhelmed with just trying to get the mass, the core of the case together."
Authorities believe the Garridos spirited Jaycee directly from her South Lake Tahoe street to the house on Walnut Avenue, at first keeping her locked way in a shed. The next year, a deputy who arrived at the gas station found no sign of them, and no witnesses, said Contra Costa sheriff's Capt. Daniel Terry. Sheriff's officials forwarded their report to investigators in El Dorado County, who continued to pursue the case for years.
"We made all the necessary efforts. We did an area check. We looked for witnesses, canvassed the area. We were never able to prove there was any validity to it, or whether it was a hoax," Terry said. "The problem we have here is, you don't have a person to call or talk to, saying 'Can you be more specific?' We acted on it like it was legit. We were never able to confirm who the reporting party was or find any independent witnesses."
A tip from UC Berkeley officers led Phillip Garrido's parole officer to call him into the Concord parole office Aug. 26. Garrido brought his wife, Dugard and the two girls he fathered with her, police say. Once separated, Dugard, now 29, revealed herself under police questioning.
Today, better technology would allow investigators to check local registered sex offenders against ownership records on vehicles matching the description, Terry noted.
Still, there is no evidence that Phillip Garrido registered as a sex offender until 1999, when he transferred from federal to state parole supervision. He was first on federal parole from a 1976 conviction for kidnapping a South Lake Tahoe casino worker and taking her to Nevada to rape her in a storage shed. He transferred in 1999 to state supervision, under a lifetime parole term on his Nevada conviction for the rape.
If true, the report that Jaycee was seen by herself, at least briefly, supports what authorities have said: It appears she never tried to escape her captors.
"If it was a proper sighting, it would indicate he had at least taken her out of the house in a car," Clark said. "I'm sure psychologically she couldn't leave."
Later, Dugard gave birth to the two girls and became the creative force in his home printing business, former customers say. She is cooperating with authorities, said Clark, who declined to elaborate.
"She's talked to us. She hasn't said, 'I don't want to be around these people,'" he said. "She's happy to have her daughters. It's kind of, I guess, a blessing in disguise, in a way. It's not the normal way anybody wants to have children." ..Source.. by John Simerman, Contra Costa Times
September 25, 2009
CA- Ex-U.S. Attorney Representing Jaycee Dugard
9-25-2009 California:
A former U.S. Attorney is representing Jaycee Dugard, the California woman who disappeared when she was 11 years old, allegedly kidnapped and held for 18 years by a convicted sex offender who fathered her two children.
McGregor Scott was the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of California from 2003 until January. He is representing Dugard on a pro bono basis, he told Main Justice in an interview. Dugard, now 29, has told authorities she was held captive by Phillip and Nancy Garrido in a secret backyard structure, where she cared for her children.
Dugard was found this summer after she and her daughters accompanied Phillip Garrido, who’d previously been convicted of kidnapping and rape charges in Nevada, to a meeting with his parole officer. The couple pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The ex-U.S. Attorney previously acted as a spokesperson on the Dugard case for the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office in California, which is investigating the Garridos. Scott, a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in their Sacramento office, said he agreed last week to represent the Dugard and her daughters at the request of her family.
“These are people who will need good legal advice and counsel going forward,” Scott said. ..Source.. by Andrew Ramonas
September 21, 2009
CA- Sarah Tofte: What we can learn from the Dugard case
9-21-2009 California:
In 1991, her stepfather watched helplessly as 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted while walking to her school bus stop near their home in Northern California. It was every parent's worst nightmare.
During the 18 years Jaycee was missing, in the aftermath of a series of horrendous crimes against children, California legislators and their counterparts across the nation addressed the problem of sexual violence primarily by establishing and expanding registration and community notification requirements for convicted sex offenders.
Courts, policymakers and the public operated on the assumption that sex-offender laws worked and were worth the money, even if they meant diverting resources from prevention efforts. Lawmakers have poured a tremendous amount of resources into these programs with strong public support.
But the fact that Jaycee Dugard's captivity in Antioch was never detected, even though her abductor, Phillip Craig Garrido, was on California's sex-offender registry, raises serious questions about these systems. We have to consider the possibility that our policies on sexual violence do not protect us, have not increased the number of offenders brought to justice and waste precious resources in the fight against rape and sexual assault.
Focusing so many resources on registration and community notification ignores the reality of sexual violence in the United States.
First, there is the problem of the registries themselves. Placing all convicted sex offenders on a registry for life could do more harm than good. The public nature of the registry makes it nearly impossible for convicted sex offenders to re-enter the community with the kind of support system they need to reduce the likelihood of their committing another offense. The systems monitor those who pose little risk to the community the same as high-risk offenders, like Garrido, whose crimes escaped detection even though he checked in as required.
Furthermore, an estimated 87 percent of sex crimes each year are committed by individuals without a prior sex-crime conviction. So pouring scarce resources into monitoring all convicted offenders means less money for programs to prevent sexual violence and to counsel victims. There also is less money for rape-investigation units, evidence testing and other tools that could help apprehend rapists who never reach the status of convicted offender.
One indication of the need for a new approach is how little has changed since Dugard was abducted. The statistics today are about the same as in 1991 - only about one-quarter of all reported rapes in California result in an arrest, and there are very few convictions.
One reason rape cases don't move through the system is the way police and prosecutors make decisions about which cases are worth investigating. National studies show that police are less likely to invest resources in investigations of so-called acquaintance rape cases, more than 80 percent of reported rapes. Studies also show that police are less likely to believe victims when the suspects are acquaintances or intimate partners and that prosecutors are reluctant to take on these cases. Experts say this reflects the rape myths still prevalent in the criminal justice system - that a sexual assault isn't really rape unless committed by a stranger and that women lie about being raped.
One concrete measure of the rape cases left behind is the number of untested rape kits that sit in police and crime lab storage facilities across the country. Testing a rape kit - the physical evidence collected after a sexual assault - can identify an assailant, confirm a suspect's contact with a victim, corroborate a victim's account and exonerate innocent defendants. Testing rape kits in the case of a rapist known to the victim can enormously strengthen prosecution and conviction and greatly reduce the chance that the person will rape someone else.
National studies have shown that both acquaintance and stranger rape cases in which a rape kit was collected and tested and contained DNA evidence are more likely to move forward in the criminal justice system. The kit also could be a useful tool for monitoring previously convicted sex offenders, because the evidence from new rapes would be matched against California's DNA database system, which houses samples from every convicted sex offender in the state.
Investing resources in testing every rape kit could make a real difference in the efforts of rape victims to realize justice in their case. After New York City implemented a policy in 2003 to test every booked rape kit , there was a dramatic increase in arrests, prosecutions and conviction in rape cases. And unexpected testing results have led law enforcement officials in New York to rethink their assumptions about rape cases - they have matched crime scene evidence to identify serial acquaintance rapists and used DNA evidence to discredit a suspect's version of the rape.
As one New York police officer told me, "Having the rape kit test results in every case certainly has changed my view of rape and helped me to realize that cases I initially viewed as weak are much stronger than I thought and worth the best investigation we can give it."
The lack of comprehensive data on the rape kit backlog is one more sign that the government has a long way to go in understanding where to spend its resources to prevent sexual violence.
We will never know for certain at what point better detective work or monitoring might have cut short Jaycee Dugard's ordeal. But if California lawmakers want to protect society from sexual violence, they should support sexual violence-prevention programs and strengthened investigations and prosecutions that are informed by the reality of rape. A good start would be to require every jurisdiction to make a commitment to test every rape kit and to follow up on the findings. ..Source.. by Sarah Tofte
September 16, 2009
CA- Jaycee Lee Dugard abductor Phillip Garrido 'wanted cute blonde girl'
9-16-2009 California:
Phillip Garrido selected the pretty blonde girl with the gap-toothed grin as his prey during a "child shopping" trip because she looked "cute" , his wife Nancy has told investigators in California.
But the couple decided not to try and snatch 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard that day in June 1991 because she was walking through South Lake Tahoe with a bunch of school friends.
Instead, they apparently trailed her to her home before returning the next morning to complete their horrific mission. Mrs Garrido allegedly jumped out of their car and grabbed her as she walked to nearby a bus-stop, while her husband remained behind the wheel.
She has described the chilling precision that went into the abduction as prosecutors put together the case for multiple charge of kidnapping and rape against the husband and wife. "That's the one I want," Garrido told her when he saw Jaycee in the resort town. "She's cute, but she's with the other kids. Let's come back later and get her."
Michael Cardoza, a Californian attorney and former prosecutor, relayed his coldly calculating words to The Sunday Telegraph after being briefed on Mrs Garrido's testimony by law enforcement contacts. Another source close to the investigation has confirmed that was her account.
"This was nothing less than a child shopping trip," said Mr Cardoza. "It just makes their actions all the more horrendous and reprehensible."
The disturbing revelation will further fuel the anguished debate in California about the state's child protection laws, which effectively encourages scores of former sex offenders to congregate in neighbourhoods - like the outskirts of Antioch - where there is little local government and not much sense of community.
It will also add to the frustration across America that so many people who interacted with the Garridos - including police, public officials and close neighbours - failed to grasp what was going on.
Mrs Garrido's version of how Jaycee was snatched throws an even more sickening light on the advice her husband dispensed a decade later to a child safety campaigner for whom he was printing a kidnap prevention fact sheet. "Phillip offered a couple of suggestions if we were updating the leaflet," Janice Gomes told The Sunday Telegraph.
"He said: 'Children should never walk to a bus-stop by themselves. They are no match for an adult so there should always be an adult with them,'" she recalled.
Garrido also dismissed the theory of "safety in numbers" for a group of unaccompanied children, telling her that a determined attacker could always pick off one of the bunch as the others fled.
"It just seemed like sensible advice that children should always be in the company of an adult, even if you think they are safe," said Mrs Gomes, who set up the National Community Empowerment Programme after one of her young daughters was molested three decades ago.
Yet despite his weird personality, a tendency to burst into song and outlandish religious beliefs, it never struck her that the man known as "creepy Phil" by youngsters in the area might have been speaking with such horrifying personal knowledge about the dangers faced by lone children at bus-stops.
And Garrido, now 58, was printing the flyers from the business he ran in the same backyard lair that was home to Jaycee - and by then the two daughters he allegedly fathered after repeated rapes - in Antioch, 45 miles east of San Francisco.
Nor was Mrs Gomes the only one of Garrido's customers to whom he made what are now haunting observations about caring for children's welfare Maria Christenson, who runs a recycling business in nearby Pittsburg, recalled her printer visiting her office at a time when she was bringing her young child with her to work. "You're doing the right thing, Maria," she recalled him telling her. "You should always watch your kids. You can't trust others to look after them."
And another former client has now uncovered unnerving evidence of Garrido's attraction to young girls - in his own music.
In 2006, Marc Lister, who runs a glass shops, was given a CD by Garrido of his songs but put the music away unplayed until last week. Now that he has listened to the collection of suggestive rock songs and trippy synthetic ballads, there are clues aplenty to Garrido's warped sexual tastes.
"The way she walks, yeah, subtly sexy/What can I do? I fall victim too/A little child, yeah, look what you do," goes one lyric that apparently blames a little girl for making him fall victim to her sexual allure.
Another lyric with a troubling message runs: "Mother in your eyes, deepness in your pride/played well when I first met 'ya/Saved from the days, I kept saving you, but in the darkness you remain/Everybody pays in the human race/Being abused and used as devices."
Mr Lister told yesterday's Contra Costa Times: "I think there's some sort of a message here. I think it's disturbing. I'm surprised he wrote lyrics about some of the things in here, whether for the girls or his own mental outlet. It's a little bit twisted. It's not right."
In another song on the CD, entitled Voices are Real - probably recorded in the sound-proofed room that has been discovered in his sprawling backyard - he declares: "For every little girl in the world/They want to be in love, yeah/You're just the same, go play a game/Just tell me that you want me."
And: "I will tell you about the only one/She's a dream, dream come true/With a note saying you're my baby blue."
Garrido, they all now realise with the benefit of chilling hindsight, knew exactly what he was talking and singing about. He and his wife allegedly kidnapped Jaycee in 1991, just three years after he was released from parole for a violent drug-fuelled 1976 kidnap and rape of a casino croupier.
And it has since emerged that Jaycee was not his only alleged child rape victim. In 1972, aged 21, he was charged with drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl at an Antioch motel, but the case was dropped when she chose not to testify in court. There is "a good chance" there are other victims, said Lt Leonard Orman of Antioch police.
Garrido's first wife has also come forward to describe how he attacked her, threatened to gouge her eyes out and had a violent and voracious sexual appetite. And Californian police are investigating whether he was involved in the abduction of two other girls, one of whom looked strikingly similar to Jaycee, who went missing after his release.
While Garrido's own words and acts are now helping paint a fuller picture of his life, his wife's past - and motives - remain much more of a mystery.
What is known about her points to an existence of extreme contradictions. For Mrs Garrido worked as a respected nursing aide caring for the disabled and the old at the same time as she helped her husband keep Jaycee and her two daughters captive in their backyard.
Indeed, investigators believe that her nursing expertise allowed her to play the role of midwife when those children, now aged 11 and 15, were born during the 1990s.
Her impressive collection of nursing references dated back to 1981 - the same year that she married Garrido in a prison ceremony, well aware that her new husband was serving a then 50-year sentence for rape and kidnapping.
She was born Nancy Bocanegra in Bexar County, Texas, in 1955, the oldest of several children in a Mexican-American family that moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1972. Some time after Garrido's 1977 incarceration at Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas, she met him while she was visiting an uncle who was a fellow inmate.
She was reportedly an impressionable Jehovah's Witness who fell for the handsome young prisoner - who was already claiming that he had found God and put the drug-fuelled sex and violence of his youth behind him.
They married when she was 26 and he was 30.
Mrs Garrido moved from Denver to Leavenworth in the mid-1980s to be nearer her husband, renting cheap one-bedroom apartments in converted townhouses. And she was already supporting herself by working as a nurse, judging from the CV she later presented. After Garrido's release, the couple moved in with his mother and step-father on Walnut Avenue, in a scruffy working-class neighbourhood of Antioch.
For the next 10 years, Mrs Garrido worked with disabled patients as a nursing and physical therapy aide in the area - even as Jaycee and later her girls were forced to live in a squalid network of tents and shacks in a compound hidden from neighbours by trees and high fences.
For 38 days in 1993, she was Jaycee's sole jailer after Garrido was locked up for breaking his parole by smoking marijuana. Yet even then, she made no effort to alert the authorities - seen as crucial evidence by the prosecution that while she may have had a domineering husband, she was actively complicit in the whole operation.
This double life has amazed her former colleagues at the ARC nursing agency which took her on in 1994 after she passed a state background check. "The people who received services through her, they liked her very much. She was a good employee and she was well-liked by the people she worked with," Barbara Maizie, the agency's executive director, told a local newspaper. "They cannot believe that this is possible. They're totally shocked."
Her family in Denver - her divorced parents and at least four brothers still live there - were just as stunned when her role emerged 10 days ago. In the first comments by a relative, her brother David blamed Garrido for his sister's plight as he recalled a young woman who would go fishing and canoeing.
"I've got nothing bad to say about my sister," he said. "He [Garrido] turned her into that. She was normal until she hooked up with that guy."
The 46-year-old looked bleary-eyed and exhausted when he opened his front door in a Denver suburb. "My mother looks even worse," he said.
His sister left the ARC agency in 1998 to look after her elderly bed-ridden mother-in-law - a role she carried out with diligence and care, according to next-door neighbour Helen Boyer. "Nancy was great with Pat [Garrido's mother]," she said. "She devoted herself to that woman."
She was always unassuming but also became increasingly reclusive. "The wife was like a hermit," said Damon Robinson, another neighbour. "She looked like she had no spirit."
Prosecutors believe she was a full partner in the kidnapping and rapes and will demand multiple life sentences against both Garridos, who pleaded not guilty in their first court hearing.
Gilbert Maines, her court-appointed attorney, appears to be preparing to argue that she was brainwashed, in thrall to her husband's personality and religious beliefs, as some acquaintances and family members have claimed.
But legal experts emphasise that even if he did hold a domineering sway over her - and he of course claimed to be able control minds and hear angels through a special black box- that would be little defence in court.
Mr Maines added that his client came to view Jaycee and the girls as "family". He said: "She loved the girls very much and she loved Jaycee very much."
Miss Dugard, 29, who has spent more than a week at a secret location with her daughters, the mother she last saw 18 years ago and other relatives, has also reportedly told them she formed a "bond" with the couple who stole her away.
She worked in Garrido's printing business, oversaw graphic designs and met clients. Indeed, The Sunday Telegraph was shown a card advertising the business that featured her in a glamorous pose, head resting on her hands, blonde hair falling across her made-up face.
She looks just like a happy young woman, even an aspiring model. That she could have appeared so contented is another mystifying twist to a near-inexplicable story. ..Source.. by Philip Sherwell in Antioch
September 11, 2009
CA- Jaycee Dugard and Sex Offender Registry Laws
9-11-2009 California:
GUEST BLOGGER: Wayne A. Logan
When Phillip Garrido was arrested in connection with the kidnapping 18 years ago of Jaycee Dugard, questions immediately arose how Garrido, a man with a history of sexual assault, could have slipped through the system. We asked author Wayne A. Logan to sort through the vagaries of the law. Logan, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, is author of "Knowledge as Power: Criminal Registration and Community Notification Laws in America," which was published in July by Stanford University Press.
The alleged kidnapping, sexual assault and 18-year imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard highlights the need to reassess the nation's sex offender registration and community notification laws.
Suspect Phillip Garrido was on California's registry, which like other state registries is known to be rife with inaccuracies and missing data. Garrido, however, was not among the scofflaws. He dutifully kept authorities apprised of his whereabouts, and his identifying information (including home address) was prominently posted on the Internet due to California's concern about the significant offenses in his history.
Perversely, Garrido was thus a "success."
But his sustained depravity highlights a reality long known to police: Individuals determined to commit repeated sexual crimes will find a way to do so. Garrido not only was compliant when his crimes came to light in 2009 but also was on California's registry when he abducted Dugard in 1991.
Moreover, even if community notification was then in effect -- it was not implemented until 1996 -- Garrido committed his crime outside his community, meaning a family like the Dugards would not have benefited anyway from the knowledge of a predator's proximity.
A reassessment of the laws will need to surmount at least two major obstacles. First, any effort will be distracted by the knowledge that human error played a role in this case -- police repeatedly failed to aggressively investigate Garrido. If registries are to exist, individuals such as Garrido surely should be on them. Yet, we know that registries contain far more individuals than can realistically be monitored, including many low-risk convicts.
This problem calls to mind Justice Potter Stewart's comment that "[w]hen everything is classified then nothing is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless." There will always be a risk of police errors, but the nation's over-inclusive system significantly heightens this possibility.
Second, any effort at reevaluation will likely face political resistance. Politicians raising the possibility of a reevaluation risk being branded as soft on crime or -- worse -- regarded as disrespectful of victims after whom laws are often named. Moreover, one often hears that the laws are justified "if one child is saved."
But the nationwide social experiment of registration and community notification laws, affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals and their families, imposes significant costs. It also distracts from other -- possibly preferable -- public safety strategies. The system demands a closer look. Indeed, it would be difficult to identify any other social policy of such magnitude that has evaded a critical review.
We must also be careful to avoid allowing Garrido to serve as a benchmark. His targeting of Dugard, who was unknown to him in 1991, is not typical of sexual offenses. Indeed, while "stranger danger" has always motivated the laws, in reality the vast majority of sex crimes are committed by people known to the victims.
Allowing Garrido's gruesome crime to drive public discourse will fuel the tendency to play down the very real harms of such crimes and make it even less likely that they will receive the attention they warrant. ..Source.. by Wayne A. Logan
