Initially, joy flowed freely when, against all hope, Jaycee Lee Dugard – kidnapped from her family at age eleven, eighteen years earlier – was found alive less than two hundred miles from her childhood home. Unfortunately, joy quickly turned to horror as details emerged of Dugard’s existence during those eighteen years.

After abducting her in 1991, convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido placed Dugard inside a fenced-off area, located in deep woods behind his suburban home. There, Garrido constructed a compound consisting of tents and crude outbuildings, an environment that authorities likened to camping out.

Worse still, Dugard became Garrido’s sex slave. The man raped her repeatedly, ultimately fathering two children with her, the first when Dugard was a mere fourteen years old. Like their mother, Garrido forced the girls to live in the compound, bereft of all contact with the outside world.

Garrido has admitted to kidnapping Dugard. It is highly likely he will now spend most or all of his remaining life imprisoned and/or institutionalized. Anyone’s heart would go out to Dugard for what she has endured. She lost the entire teen years of her childhood as well as her innocence at far too young an age. The same is true for her daughters. It seems almost inconceivable that slavery could still be possible in contemporary America.

Regrettably, the horror does not even end here. Other members of Dugard’s family also ended up enslaved because of her disappearance. Dugard’s mother Terry became enslaved to her grief. For ten years after her daughter’s disappearance, Terry took vacation from work at Christmas and the anniversary of the abduction as a time for remembrance. She could do little more to pass this time than weep inconsolably.

The grief and recrimination destroyed their marriage, according to her husband. The pair separated some years ago and now live apart.

Terry’s husband, Carl Probyn, Jaycee’s stepfather, also wound up enslaved – in his case by suspicion. He was the one who saw the girl abducted as she waited at her school bus stop. He saw her pulled into a car, screaming, and watched it race away.

Probyn recalls Jaycee was at the top of a hill and he at the bottom when the kidnapping occurred. He said he pedaled furiously in a vain attempt to reach/follow her but his mountain bike was no match for a speeding car.

As the only witness, both local police and the FBI targeted Probyn on suspicion of involvement in Jaycee’s abduction. Both groups interrogated him repeatedly. Authorities never brought formal charges against Probyn but they never completed dropped the investigation either.

The Probyns were robbed of Jaycee’s childhood too. “He had her longer than we did,” Carl said wistfully at one point, referring to Garrido. Both parents appear to have legitimately grieved as Jaycee’s loss. Yet while Terry found respect and sympathy from the community in her mourning, Carl knew only too well that some on the police force as well as some of his neighbors privately felt placing him behind bars was the best way to ensure such justice as was possible for the little girl missing and presumed dead.

Legally, suspicion of guilt is not proof of guilt. Yet it is only human nature to desire punishment and restitution and this often exacerbates the former into the latter for many people. The more heinous and shocking the crime, the more readily people are willing to accept suspicion as proof. (i.e. “The police wouldn’t be checking it if there was wasn’t something fishy going on there.”)

“I've gone through hell, I mean I'm a suspect up until yesterday,” Carl Probyn told reporters. If Garrido had not undergone some type of religious revelation several years ago that caused him to act more recklessly and betray himself, Probyn might well have remained enslaved by suspicion for the rest of his life. It is an interesting side lesson to take from this part happy/part repulsive story of a family ripped apart only to find reunion years later.

Because they stand suspected of terrorism, many of us fear any of the detainees currently residing at Guantanamo Bay as inherently too violent and dangerous for housing in U.S. prisons or affording the rights associated with civil trials. In some high-profile cases, these may well be legitimate concerns but it is just as valid to wonder how many Carl Probyn types are among the lesser-known figures. We know they exist because U.S. authorities have already found and released some previously.

Like Probyn, these individuals wound up robbed of their families, their countries, and their lives for years without earning a dreg of our sympathy because our fear and suspicions engulfed and overwhelmed our sense of justice. The Dugard case demonstrates the greatest wrong which can come from this is to allow the truly guilty to continue walking about without penalty and the genuinely innocent to continue suffering at their hands.

It is time to unshackle the enslaved by unshackling ourselves from our suspicious fears.

Thanks for the first graspable acct look on all sides of this monster man and wife act and its side effects-.

Megan's law & 3 Strike & Deadbeat (govt IOLTA collectors as agents) law(s) unfolded in the bi product masses process-

lmg

When you say:
If Garrido had not undergone some type of religious revelation several years ago that caused him to act more recklessly and betray himself, Probyn might well have remained enslaved by suspicion for the rest of his life. It is an interesting side lesson to take from this part happy/part repulsive story of a family ripped apart only to find reunion years later.

What is an interesting side lesson?

It is absolutley horrifying and I think your analogy an apt one. There is this South Park episode called "Imagination Land" where the terrorists become nealry invincible because they are attcking our imaginations--and we've no defense against that anymore than we do against ghosts, mummies or count chocula. A parody worth chcking out.

Your take on the story reminds me of a novel I just read, which has been in the news lately because it's on Obama's summer reading list. Lush Life by Richard Price describes Eric Cash, who gets mugged on the lower east side with two companions. The first is so drunk he just falls over. Eric hands over his wallet. The third says something like "Night tonight, man." He gets shot and killed by the mugger.

Because of what turns out to be questionable eyewitness testimony, the police come to suspect Eric Cash, and they interrogate him. No torture, but the question him aggressively because they don't believe there was a mugging. Most of the novel is about Eric and the cops trying to deal with this screw-up. Eric's life turns empty, and the cops have alienated the one person who got a look at the killer.

The novel is meant to also be about the clash between the old Lower East Side, a ghetto, and the new "lush life" there, where 28 year-olds feel old and everybody is drinking absinthe cocktails and the like. In fact, the black characters get short shrift. But it's great on the psychology of the falsely accused, the different kinds of trauma that crime creates. It's nothing like enslavement or waterboarding, but I'm glad the president is reading it.

Bell:

then to stand accused by society of a crime not committed. Neither is "not guilty" a proclamation of innocence.

Interesting case at SCOTUS involving a man convicted of murder and sitting on death row in Georgia. SCOTUS ordered a federal court to hear the case of Troy Davis who was convicted of killing a police officer. It appears 7 witnesses recanted and the star witness may be the killer. One would believe SCOTUS would be in favor of having a fair hearing to determine if indeed Troy Davis was innocent.

In ordering the Federal Court to hear the case and joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer; Justice John Paul Stevens wrote;

“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing."

In opposition, there was the old junk science mathematics failure Justice Scalia (who claimed false convictions were < than 1% of all felony convictions) was joined by Justice "long-dong" Thomas:

"the hearing would be 'a fool’s errand,' because Mr. Davis’s factual claims were 'a sure loser.'

He went on to say that the federal courts would be powerless to assist Mr. Davis even if he could categorically establish his innocence.

'This court has never held,' Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

Justice John Paul Stevens countered quoting Appeals Court Judge Barkett:

“It ‘would be an atrocious violation of our Constitution and the principles on which it is based’ to execute an innocent person,”

That a justice system and a society can hold a person under a veil of life time suspicion and/or prison without recourse from the threat of death or diminished life is certainly a threat with no escape from its hell. Maybe dunking, pressing, or burning at the stake will wring the confession Scalia, Thomas and the mad-men wish to hear to put their lust to rest?

As far as Gitmo prisoners . . . the prison in the UP is a level 5. One hour out and 23 hours in the cell. The food and showers come to you. The threat of Mulims is no more extreme than that any domestic prisoner. The argument is ignorant and without merit. Then too, are they really guilty?

I read the accounts of this story in several papers today. From outrage and onto boiled blood my emotions were charged high. It would seem impossible today that such a tragedy could occur, yet surely there are probably others in this land held against their will.

Your insight into a lesser discussed but not so lesser of a societal issue as to the tribulations of the innocents who live under the dark shadow of suspicion caught me both off guard and appreciative of the sentiment.

However I cannot draw a such direct parallel to the POWs in the War against al qaeda and the Taliban. I think these people should be treated according to the Geneva conventions and should be allowed Red Cross visitors. Their families should be made aware that they are alive and in good health. But until the Taliban and Al Qaeda declare an end to their Holy war against the West and lay down their arms the POWs should remain POWs in my book.