Prosecutors released portions of Jaycee Lee Dugard’s diary. Dugard was kidnapped when she was eleven years old as she waited for a school bus outside her family’s South Lake Tahoe home. Last year after spending eighteen years in captivity she was found and released. Phillip and Nancy Garrido have been charged with kidnapping and raping Dugard, She had two children by Phillip Garrido who are now 12 and 15 years old.

Dugard’s diary shows mixed feelings towards the Garridos. At the same time that she wants to be ‘free” she says that she would never do anything to hurt them. Such feelings are consistent with the Stockholm Syndrome. The Stockholm Syndrome affects people who have been kidnapped and who spend long periods in captivity. Initially, after they are kidnapped they feel angry and shocked. But later they feel helpless and lack of control. It is not unusual for victims suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome to develop close feeling of attachment to their captors.

Experts in the field attribute these feelings to the total control that the captors have over their victims. The diary seems to support this thesis. Thirteen years into her captivity Dugard wrote, “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,” But she also wrote, “I don’t want to hurt him … sometimes I think my very presence hurts him. So how can I ever tell him how I want to be free. 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.” This shows the mixed feelings of those kidnapped. When she received a kitten from the Garridos for her birthday two years after she was kidnapped, Dugard wrote in her diary, “I got (a cat) for my birthday from Phil and Nancy … they did something for me that no one else would do for me, they paid 200 dollars just so I could have my own kitten.” This certainly show the total control the Garridos exhibited over her.