The Jaycee Lee Dugard story caught the world off-guard when it suddenly burst into the open, hitting every parent smack on the face with the harrowing thought of how unsafe the world could be for our children. The thought of having one’s child snatched by some deranged individual and kept away and abused for many years sends a chill down every parent’s spine. What happened to Jaycee could happen to any child. What is really disturbing is the fact that Jaycee’s kidnappers managed to keep secret a crime that spanned 18 years in their backyard.
As a parent, I can imagine how difficult it was for the Jaycee’s parents to live for 18 years with the shadow of the loss of their daughter hanging heavy above their heads everyday. The most painful part is the loss of the gift of parenthood. Jaycee’s kidnappers stole that gift from her parents, depriving them of the joy of raising a little human being into a beautiful individual, a good person capable of good parenting.
Now that Jaycee is reunited with her parents again, another painful process comes her and her parents’ way–the process of filling in the gap that the 18 years of separation has caused them. She disappeared when she was just 11 years old and now she’s 29, is it possible to reconstruct her life so that she can become the woman she should have become had her kidnapping not happened? I doubt that it is possible. No amount of therapy could heal the wounds that her ordeal has left on her brain and on her psyche.
The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard is a reminder to us that we should strive to be the best parents that we can be. Crimes like what Philip Garrido has committed are often linked to bad parenting. Most offenders in our society were abused when they were children. I do not know about Garrido’s childhood, but I believe that it may have contributed a lot to what he is now.