Awful Abduction Case in CA
I was waiting for my connecting flight to San Fransisco (for tomorrow’s Mises Circle) when I first heard of the awful Jaycee Dugard 18-year imprisonment story. (Here is an opinion piece with a bunch of new facets, both in the piece and the links on the sidebar. I don’t know if they are accurate; I actually am not even clicking on them because this story really troubles me.)
The thing that I don’t understand in this, though, is how did the guy keep someone prisoner for so long, in a regular neighborhood? I can understand if a fairly young child is taken, that the kid doesn’t really get what’s going on and might grow up thinking the abductor is his/her parent.
But this girl was 11 when she was taken. (I’m not using “alleged” since the guy admits he did it. And incidentally, his self-absorbed “this was really a heartwarming story about how I turned my life around” actually horrifies me almost as much as his behavior; it’s another manifestation of the banality of evil.)
Readers, please don’t freak out; I’m not blaming the girl for not running away. I’m just trying to make sense of this. Wouldn’t she tell her children (presumably fathered by the abductor) what their situation was, and that if they ever had an opportunity, to make a break for it to get help?
So it seems that either this guy must have had a standing threat, like, “If any of you tries anything…” or that over time the original victim just accepted her fate.
But again, that just seems impossible to me, since she was in what, fifth or sixth grade when she was taken? Even though to adults, 11 seems tiny, think back to when you were that age. You certainly knew what a kidnapper was, and that if you were taken you would devote your life to killing the guy / escaping.
Well I just had to get that off my chest. I wonder if other people have wondered that too, but were hesitant to bring it up since, again, it sounds like I’m blaming the girl, when that’s not what I’m doing.
This disgusting story just doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t understand how this is even possible.
