Jaycee Dugard Diary: 'I Want to Be Free'

In excerpts, she yearned for her own life
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 11, 2010 6:41 PM CST
Jaycee Dugard Diary: 'I Want to Be Free'
This Sept. 14, 2009, photo shows Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, during a bail hearing.   (AP Photo)

California prosecutors today made public excerpts of a journal kept by Jaycee Dugard during her 18 years of captivity. The entries show a yearning for freedom but also demonstrate the amount of control Phillip Garrido wielded over her, reports MSNBC. "How can I ever tell him I want to be free," she wrote at one point. "Free to come and go as I please. ... Free to say I have a family. I will never cause him pain if it's in my power to prevent it. FREE."

Another entry, from 2004: “It feels like I’m sinking. ... This is supposed to be my life to do with what I like ... but once again he has taken it away. How many times is he allowed to take it away from me?” Dugard, now 29 and with two children fathered by Garrido, was moved last week to a safe house within driving distance of the Antioch, Calif., residence where she was imprisoned. A church has offered to pay her rent for a year, sources tell the Contra Costa Times, but Dugard is still strapped, and unlikely to get much aid from the state. “Let’s be praying for them,” one church member says. “It’s as bad a situation as we’ve seen.”
(More Jaycee Lee Dugard stories.)

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