Dugard talks ‘Freedom’ since escaping captivity
Jaycee Lee Dugard talked to ABC News about life after captivity. Photo/ABC News
By Robert Salonga, Bay Area News Group
At long last, Jaycee Lee Dugard looks like she is in control.
So much so that in an hourlong TV special with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that aired Friday, one of the most prominent segments shows her directing and calming a horse with a series of nonverbal gestures and commands.
The exercise was among the kinds of therapy that have helped transform Dugard, who famously survived 18 years of captivity in an Antioch backyard, during which she bore two daughters fathered by her rapist kidnapper. She had been kidnapped from a school bus stop in Meyers.
Since she resurfaced in August 2009, and released a best-selling memoir in 2011 — the year she gave her first public interview, with Sawyer, as a coming out of sorts — Dugard has come to exude a preternatural confidence and acceptance of how half her life was stolen by captors Phillip and Nancy Garrido.
