From AP:
A serial sex offender was ordered Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison after the California woman he kidnapped, raped and held captive for 18 years said he and his wife-accomplice had stolen her life.
Victim Jaycee Dugard was 11 when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido as her stepfather watched her walk toward a school bus. She gave birth to two daughters fathered by Garrido while he held her in a secret backyard compound.
The defendants, both dressed in orange jumpsuits, made no eye contact with anyone in the room and kept their heads down as Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, read her daughter’s statement at the ongoing hearing that Dugard did not attend.
“I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence,” Dugard wrote in a portion of the statement directed to Phillip Garrido. “Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that.
“I hated every second of every day for 18 years,” she said in her first public statement since resurfacing. “You stole my life and that of my family.”A judge imposed the maximum possible sentence of 431 years to life on 60-year-old Phillip Garrido, calling his treatment of Jaycee Dugard evil and reprehensible.
Garrido, who was on parole for a 1976 rape when Dugard was abducted, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and 13 sexual assault charges, including six counts of rape and seven counts of committing lewd acts captured on video.
His plea was part of a deal with prosecutors that saw Nancy Garrido sentenced to 36 years to life after pleading guilty to kidnapping and rape.
The deal was designed, in part, to spare Dugard and her children from having to testify at a trial.
In the statement, Dugard called Phillip Garrido a liar and said what Nancy Garrido did to her was evil. She said she hoped both of them would have as many sleepless nights as she had.
“There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions,” Dugard said in a portion of the statement directed to Nancy Garrido.
Dugard also said she was doing well now and told Phillip Garrido “you do not matter anymore.”
Dugard was given an opportunity to present El Dorado County Superior Judge Douglas Phimister with an oral or written statement about her experience. Prosecutors typically encourage crime victims and their families to prepare detailed victim impact statements so courts can factor their suffering into sentencing decisions.
Dugard, who has written a memoir set to be published next month, has strived to preserve her privacy in the 22 months since she was identified during a chance meeting with Phillip Garrido’s parole officer.
In a presentencing memo justifying a sentence of hundreds of years for Phillip Garrido, who was on parole for a 1976 rape and kidnapping when Dugard was taken, District Attorney Vern Pierson said that Dugard spent the first one-and-a-half years after her kidnapping locked in a backyard shed.
She did not leave the backyard for the first four years after her abduction.
“Phillip Garrido should have spent the rest of his life in prison for the crimes he committed in 1976. He never should have been allowed back on the street to even have the opportunity to commit the crimes he committed in this case,” Pierson said. Garrido “stole the childhood and innocence from an 11-year-old child.”
The Garridos and their defense lawyers had an opportunity to address Judge Phimister. Phillip Garrido chose not to.
Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido from the South Lake Tahoe street where her family lived and forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10, 1991. The abduction occurred as Dugard’s stepfather watched her walk to a school bus stop.
Authorities have said the couple drove the girl 168 miles south to their home in Antioch and held her prisoner there for the next 18 years, four months and 16 days. At first, she was locked in the shed then confined to a series of tents she would come to share with the daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido and delivered by his wife.
The defendants were arrested in August 2009 after Phillip Garrido inexplicably brought his ragtag clan to a meeting with his parole officer, who had no idea the convicted rapist had been living with a young woman and two girls he described as his nieces.
Dugard at first tried to conceal her identity, telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa, Garrido eventually acknowledged kidnapping her, and Dugard disclosed her identity.
Her reappearance proved a costly embarrassment for California parole officials, who had to explain how a parolee under intensive supervision could live with his victim and have children with her undetected.
The situation existed despite repeated surprise home visits and a woman telling sheriff’s deputies in 2006 that her sex offender neighbor was living with small children.
The state last year paid Dugard a $20 million settlement under which officials acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Garrido. California has since increased monitoring of sex offenders.
KCRA Sacramento has been providing rolling updates on the story.
Earlier today, Nancy Garrido’s attorney spoke to the press after her sentencing: