Jaycee Dugard Abduction: Why Did Wife Stand By?


jaycee lee dugard abduction
For 18 years, Nancy Garrido stood by, knowing her husband kept another woman in captivity.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, when she was 11 years old, by a registered sex offender named Phillip Garrido. Garrido fathered two daughters with her, now ages 11 and 15, and kept all three women in isolated sheds behind his house. Now, after 18 years of captivity and a chance investigation by University of California, Berkeley police officers, Dugard was finally discovered this past Wednesday. 

"It's kind of a shocker," said Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, to CNN on Friday. "It's just sick, it benefited him but destroyed everybody else. That's pretty sick." 


Probyn witnessed Jaycee's abduction in front of his home in South Lake Tahoe.

"When it first happened, I was thinking, 'If I had my car keys, I would have chased him and done this and this,'" Probyn said. "But lately, toward the last few years, I just wanted an ending to this."

He told CNN that he's still in disbelief at the recent turn of events.

But perhaps the most disturbing and unbelievable detail to come out of this case is the fact that Phillip Garrido's wife, Nancy Garrido, knew about Jaycee the entire time. She was present in the car when Jayce was kidnapped. And she remained silent all 18 years, as Jaycee and her daughters lived behind the Garrido's California house, never having gone to school or a doctor. Marrying Mr. Wrong

Investigators have charged Phillip Garrido with kidnapping and abuse after police discovered Dugard on Wednesday. Nancy Garrido is also in police custody.

One must wonder what goes through the mind of a wife like this, someone who can stand idly by as her husband kidnaps, rapes and keeps captive another woman. Though the investigation is now ongoing, perhaps more details will emerge in her role in this 18-year saga. Was it fear that kept Nancy silent? Or does this just go to show how some women can overlook the monster in their husbands? Why Do Victims Of Domestic Violence Stay?