Dugard details ordeal; kidnappers sentenced

Phillip and Nancy Garrido "stole my life," Jaycee Dugard said in a statement read in court shortly before the two were sentenced.

Phillip and Nancy Garrido "stole my life," Jaycee Dugard said in a statement read in court Thursday shortly before the two were sentenced for abducting her when she was 11 and concealing her with the two daughters she bore after Phillip Garrido repeatedly raped her.

Image: Nancy Garrido, Phillip Garrido
Phillip Garrido, and Nancy Garrido, who pleaded guility to the 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, are seen during their sentencing hearing in El Dorado County Superior Court in Placerville, Calif., Thursday, June 2, 2011. Calling him the \"poster child\" of a sexual predator, Judge Douglas C. Phimister sentenced Phillip Garrido to 431 year to life in state prison and Nancy Garrido to 36 year to life.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, pool)Rich Pedroncelli / AP

The two defendants pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape in late April. Phillip Garrido also pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts captured on video.

Phillip Garrido, 60, received a prison term of 431 years to life, shortly after his 55-year-old wife was sentenced to a term of 36 years to life.

Both have waived their right to appeal.

The deal was designed, in part, to spare Dugard and her children from having to testify at a trial.

In a victim impact statement read to the court by her mother, Dugard, now 31, said her life had been stolen.

"I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of my life in your presence," Dugard wrote in a portion of the statement directed to Phillip Garrido. "Everything you ever did to me was wrong and I hope one day you will see that."

"I hated every second of every day for 18 years," she said. "You stole my life and that of my family."

She said she hoped both of them would have as many sleepless nights as she had.

"There is no God in the universe that would condone your actions," Dugard said in a portion of the statement directed to Nancy Garrido.

Dugard also said she was doing well now and told Phillip Garrido "you do not matter anymore."

Prosecutors typically encourage crime victims and their families to prepare detailed victim impact statements so courts can factor their suffering into sentencing decisions.

El Dorado County Superior Judge Douglas Phimister imposed the maximum possible sentence on Phillip Garrido, calling his treatment of Dugard evil and reprehensible.

Phimister revealed several new details about Dugard's abduction, saying Phillip Garrido used a Taser to subdue her and threatened to stun her again if she tried to escape.

"Basically what you did was you took a human being and turned them into a chattel, a piece of furniture, to be used by you at your whim," the judge said. "You reinvented slavery, that's what you did."

Phimister added that the Garridos had "gone shopping" for a young girl to abduct the day they snatched Dugard.

Dugard, who has written a memoir set to be published next month, has tried to preserve her privacy in the 22 months since she was identified during a chance meeting with Phillip Garrido's parole officer.

In a presentencing memo justifying a sentence of hundreds of years for Phillip Garrido, who was on parole for a 1976 rape and kidnapping when Dugard was taken, Pierson said that Dugard spent the first one-and-a-half years after her kidnapping locked in a backyard shed. She did not leave the backyard for the first four years after her abduction.

"Phillip Garrido should have spent the rest of his life in prison for the crimes he committed in 1976. He never should have been allowed back on the street to even have the opportunity to commit the crimes he committed in this case," District Attorney Vern Pierson said. Garrido "stole the childhood and innocence from an 11-year-old child."

The Garridos and their defense lawyers also have an opportunity to address Judge Phimister, but attorney Susan Gellman, who represents Phillip Garrido, said he won't have a statement.

Defendants often use sentencing hearings to express remorse or provide biographical information that could persuade a court to impose a lighter sentence.

Image: New and old photos of Jaycee Dugard.
The new People Magazine cover, left, and a photo of Jaycee Dugard, at the age of 11, right.

Dugard was grabbed by Nancy Garrido from the South Lake Tahoe street where her family lived and forced into a car driven by Phillip Garrido on June 10, 1991. The abduction occurred as Dugard's stepfather watched her walk to a school bus stop.

Authorities have said the couple drove the girl 168 miles south to their home in Antioch and held her prisoner there for the next 18 years, four months and 16 days. At first, she was locked in the shed then confined to a series of tents she would come to share with the daughters fathered by Phillip Garrido and delivered by his wife.

The defendants were arrested in August 2009 after Phillip Garrido inexplicably brought his ragtag clan to a meeting with his parole officer, who had no idea the convicted rapist had been living with a young woman and two girls he described as his nieces.

Dugard at first tried to conceal her identity, telling authorities she was hiding from an abusive husband in Minnesota and giving her name as Alyssa, Garrido eventually acknowledged kidnapping her, and Dugard disclosed her identity.

Her reappearance proved a costly embarrassment for California parole officials, who had to explain how a parolee under intensive supervision could live with his victim and have children with her undetected.

The situation existed despite repeated surprise home visits and a woman telling sheriff's deputies in 2006 that her sex offender neighbor was living with small children.

The state last year paid Dugard a $20 million settlement under which officials acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Garrido. California has since increased monitoring of sex offenders.