Freedom

by Jaycee Dugard

  The key that we landed on was beautiful and loaded with hermit crabs. I was so excited to take pictures of them and send them to my daughter, who used to have her own hermit crabs. She would have been so excited to see this village of them. We ate lunch on the beach, and I fed some of my biscuit to the hermit crab that was scuttling around me. Our guide shouted to us to come over to the boat and said he had spotted a manta ray. We piled in the boat and floated over the area and then we saw it, too. A pale shape in the water that just glided over the surface. Beautiful. On the return trip we went through the mangroves and tried to spot manatees but didn’t see any. I hope to see some next time.

  Dinner that night was at the household of a local lady named Enid. We were served fish backbone and rice and beans. Not a big fan of fish, so this was a tough dinner for me to eat. It’s hard not to be thankful for what you are given because the locals have so little.

  After our morning exercise on our ninth day, we learned that Debra, the owner of the hotel we were staying at, was planning a trip into the nearest town. After weeks without a good latte and fresh veggies, several in our group wanted to go, including me!

  After we finished working on the teacher’s house and it was finally done (it felt so good to have it accomplished!), we set off on a journey to a town across the river called Placencia. Once there, our first order of business was to find the local coffee shop. I had my first iced caramel macchiato in a week. It was no Starbucks but very delicious anyway. We shopped around and had lunch at a Thai restaurant. The town was not very big, but compared to Monkey River, it was huge. You could buy fresh veggies, which is what Charles did for the party the village was giving us that night. After a few hours, we returned to Monkey River and relaxed the rest of the day.

  That night we all went to Ivan’s, where there was some interesting food served and dancing for those that wanted to. I was too embarrassed to dance in front of half the town, so I just watched with Chelsea. I tried rice wine for the first time and decided I didn’t care for it too much. I sat outside and watched the kids play with paper airplanes. It was nice to see them having so much fun. It was a fun party and a nice way to end our trip. The next day, we left for Belize City. Saying good-bye to everyone was really hard. I hope to return to the tiny village one day.

  Along the road, we stopped to see the local pyramids. They were different than what I imagined the Egyptian pyramids to be. Beautiful in their own way, though. We climbed around on them, and you could go to the top of some of them. Being in a place where so much history had taken place was a weird feeling. Not sure how to describe it. Eerie in a way.

  We made it to Belize City in the afternoon. We all stayed at a hotel and went to dinner. We were told it was not safe to roam the city past dark. I had my first hot shower in over a week in that hotel. It felt incredible. I forget how much I take for granted nowadays. The next day we got on a plane for our six-hour plane ride home.

  I will always remember my trip to Monkey River. The people there really inspire me with their unstoppable spirits. They want their community to continue and thrive, and I can see why. I met some incredible new friends on this journey, and I will always look fondly on my time there and respect the many lessons learned from its inhabitants.

  Monkey River trip.

  Rex from Monkey River.

  Me putting a flower on Rex.

  Me reading with a girl and ever-faithful Rex by our side.

  Hotel we stayed in on Monkey River.

  Cleaning the clinic.

  Working on the teacher’s house in Monkey River.

  Me and Rebecca hammering the walls in Monkey River.

  During clean-up on the teacher’s house in Monkey River.

  Me doing yoga on one of the keys in Belize.

  Me, Rebecca, and Kassel in the Belize jungle.

  Me doing more yoga in the jungle of Belize.

  Me, Rebecca, and Kassel enjoying fresh young coconuts after working on the teacher’s house.

  Snorkeling in Belize.

  Snorkeling with life preserver.

  Snorkeling with life preserver and taking pictures underwater.

  Me enjoying my first caramel macchiato in Belize.

  Two Psychologists and a Survivor Walk into a Bar . . .

  * * *

  You should never leave home without your therapist!

  That’s why I sometimes travel with two!

  This has become the funny joke I use when I travel with Rebecca and Abigail. I first met Abigail around the fall of 2014. She had come to meet Dr. Bailey and help out with a high-conflict-divorce family that Transitioning Families was treating.

  During that visit, I learned we had a mutual interest in seeing Stockholm syndrome deleted from the public’s eye. This had become an important issue for me, because to me the label of having Stockholm syndrome was degrading. I wanted to see a change in how the public saw those who had been through something like I had.

  Because of Abigail’s background in writing academic papers, Rebecca and I both saw the opportunity to turn our dream of a paper on this subject into reality.

  To date, we have spoken at Harvard’s grand rounds in Boston . . . for some reason I always want to call that Ground Round! Being asked to present at Harvard was incredible. I thought I would feel really intimidated being in such a prestigious school and me not even going to high school. I thought I would feel stupid. However, the people we presented to were all very welcoming. Even though I was nervous as heck, we ended up having a lively discussion of Stockholm and its many downfalls. As a special gift, they gave us fleece Harvard jackets. I wore mine the whole day and pretended I had actually gone to Harvard!

  We also spoke at a conference at Yale University and at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) in New Orleans. We had a very prominent gentleman come up to us after our presentation and say he would never again use the term. High fives all around, ladies! We have had tons of fun traveling together and making fun memories.

  New Orleans was a lot of fun. I thought it would be hard to go to a place that had been so devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But I loved it. The paper we presented together at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies was well received, and many thanked us for bringing this topic to the forefront.

  That night we walked around the French Quarter, and Rebecca bought us each a T-shirt that represented us. Abigail got one that had a bedazzled shoe on it representing her love of designer shoes; she loves her Jimmy Choos! I got one with a knight on his horse because she knows I love horses and stories about medieval stuff. Rebecca’s was a jeweled Mardi Gras mask, which I think reflected her love of dancing and her free spirit.

  On the street corners were a lot of musicians. One duo captured our attention. Two ladies played a violin and a guitar, and they sounded like heaven. It was truly beautiful music. I couldn’t believe they were not famous and were just playing on this street corner like this, in the hopes they would make enough money to live on one more day. They were so good, I had tears in my eyes. In fact, we all did.

  A little about my friend Abigail. She is tall and blond and beautiful and, to my utter delight, sings like an eighty-year-old soprano! It’s the best thing ever because she knows all the songs by Lil Wayne and Drake and oldies but goodies, too. When she sings them in her high granny voice, it can make even the grumpiest person laugh; I know I sure do! Perhaps that’s why we like her and the only reason we keep her around!

  She also loves Starbucks and has a beautiful greyhound named Cobblepot. When she first introduced us to her dog, I immediately had a vision of Lady and the Tramp and that scene in the park when everybody is walking their dogs and all the owners look like their dogs—she’s one of them. Long legs and built just like her greyhound!

  During a trip to Washington for NCMEC’s Hope Awards, we all went for a private tour of Mount Vernon. A funny thing happened when we went over to where George and Martha were buried. I don’t always pronounce things right, lik
e my “wolf” sounds like “woof,” and I was once caught pronouncing “tutorials” like “toot-uh-rolls.” Another two words that get me all befuddled are “reef” and “wreath.” Although I would like to say I know the difference, these words can sometimes come out of my mouth as the same. Rebecca always catches me on this, and we laugh hysterically about it. She’s lucky I have a good sense of humor! On this day at Mount Vernon our friend had set it up for us to go into the tomb of George and Martha and place a wreath in honor of the occasion. When the wreath was presented to us, I couldn’t help but think, Thank goodness, I don’t have to give a speech about placing the wreath! Because I would surely say “reef”! That turned out to be a special and poignant moment for us and cemented our friendship. We came out feeling a strong sense of camaraderie. It was a moment I will never forget.

  During our presentations of our critique of Stockholm syndrome, Abigail always keeps us grounded. I always get nervous and I rely on Rebecca and Abigail to get us through the technical background of Stockholm, and then we field questions about how it relates to me and my story. I always like to start out with the obvious: “I WAS NOT, I AM NOT, I WAS NEVER IN LOVE WITH MY CAPTOR!” Nor did I want to spend eighteen years of my life as a captive. That’s more time than I had been alive, and today that is more time than I have been free.

  During our presentation at Yale University, a lady with what looked like a small furry hedgehog on her head (which turned out to be just her questionably fashionable hat) posed this question: “Jaycee, what do you do for yourself?” The question was so unrelated to the topic that I wasn’t sure how to answer. I ended up saying, “I do all of this for me. I started the JAYC Foundation for me. I wanted to give back to other families what I had been given. I was doing this talk because it was something I was passionate speaking out about. I do all this because I have hope that life does not end when you are kidnapped or raped or abused. I believe life goes on and all that you can endure can be channeled into positive things for others to learn and grow from.”

  After she asked me the same question two or three more times in different ways, I could not help but wonder if maybe the hedgehog on her head was blocking her ears and she could not hear me. She did not seem to accept my answer, because later she approached me in a restaurant, this time without the creature on her head, and asked me the same thing again. I think sometimes people ask questions, but they have already formed the answer in their heads and cannot hear anything else.

  Bear with me if you think I am belaboring the issue of Stockholm syndrome, but it’s really the first time I have been really passionate about an issue. I am usually very neutral about things and can see both sides of an argument. This is different. There is no right side. It’s wrong, and the label can be very damaging to the mental health of the victim being labeled. I have even talked briefly to Gina and Amanda from the Cleveland case when we all attended NCMEC’s 2015 Hope Awards, and they believe it to be a misleading, degrading label for them as well. It seems to be a common complaint of many survivors.

  When my two daughters and I were rescued in 2009, the news was covering my story heavily and I had no desire to watch any of it. I was living it. I was so happy to be reunited with my mom and family that it really wasn’t on my radar to be offended at the time.

  I realized later that I had been labeled as the “girl with Stockholm” and, honestly, it was very horrible hearing that. Not to mention the impact of family members thinking I had Stockholm syndrome. Once you hear something like that, it’s hard to think it’s anything else. That’s one reason why this label is so damaging: because it gives an “explanation” for something that nobody but the victim truly understands and puts a nice, tidy bow on it for everyone else! Like all that I had survived and endured was being pushed down into two words. It makes all I went through seem insignificant and boils it down to “You loved your captor, therefore, you never wanted to be free” or somehow you were stupid enough to confuse abuse with love. Bullshit! You can’t take something that happened in the ’70s and pin the rap on all of us that come after. The incident that gave us that name was a very different hostage situation. But for some reason the news and media still like to use the term. It’s used in TV shows and books all the time.

  Phillip was good at making me feel sorry for him. He was a seasoned manipulator. I was a naïve girl. Phillip did not want to see me cry. He said it made him feel bad. I was alone. Completely. Years passed—years of abuse physically, verbally, and emotionally. I adapted to survive. We all can learn to adapt to survive. It’s in our genes.

  When I was little and lived with my grandma and grandpa in Garden Grove, we used to watch nature programs together. Thinking back on those shows, the interactions between predator and prey made me think about me and how I survived with a predator all those years. I began to see how I would use some of the techniques in those programs on Phillip and Nancy just by instinct. A friend of mine wrote a book on a subject that seemed to confirm a lot of what I already knew. It’s called The Power of the Herd and combines my love of horses and my favorite subject: understanding power dynamics.

  If I was prey, how did I survive so long in such a predator-dominated situation? Shouldn’t I be dead? Not only did I survive but my kids did as well. I feel shivers run up and down my spine thinking about that and remembering the way my stomach would hurt every time I would see him. Look how easily our lives could have been cut short.

  When you are captive you don’t really spend time asking yourself why. Most of my energy was spent on surviving and protecting my girls. Protection meant diffusing his anger and trying hard to outfox both Nancy’s and Phillip’s manipulations. My terror ran deep. That kind of fear lives deep and it’s hard to describe. I didn’t feel it all the time, but it was there living inside and it kept me alive.

  The predator in nature is ruled by needs and the pressure of survival. While the prey in nature is focused on survival first and basic needs second. When presenting our critique of Stockholm syndrome, we use a video to demonstrate. It starts out with an impala running for its life from a cheetah. You see the cheetah outrun the impala and grab it by the neck. The impala goes limp and the cheetah drags it away. The cheetah is exhausted by the run and thinks its prey is dead. Another predator comes along, a hyena. The cheetah is so tired it cannot protect its meal from the other predator and reluctantly leaves the scene. The next scene is the hyena walking over to the dead impala, but just as the hyena is about to sink her teeth into the prey, the impala whips up and darts away. We use this video because it is such a great example of prey versus predator and how the prey had to think like a predator in order to survive. In this case, the impala knew what the predator wanted—its death—and acted like it was dead to get away later and win another day.

  Predators in our human world prey on the weak and the strong; to them there is no distinction. Phillip and Nancy both felt very much like predators to me. They stalked me up the hill I was walking on that fateful day in June. Had they seen me before? Did they see me at the flea market the day before, like some people speculate? They used their car as a weapon, using it to cut off any hope of an exit I had. He used his sharp teeth of a stun gun to take me to the ground. I was his helpless, weak prey that he dragged back to his cave for his consumption just as a predator would do. But I was cunning like the impala and eventually got my freedom.

  There are days I think about all these issues and try to make sense of all that happened. I learned early on not to take what happened to me personally. It was not like I or my family ever deserved what happened. Maybe that’s how to keep yourself sane after bad things: don’t blame yourself. If I had blamed me, I am not sure I would have fared so well. It’s important to take care of yourself first so that you can be there for others.

  I know now that slowly but surely I discovered that I didn’t feel like prey anymore. I didn’t feel like a predator either. Although I had by this time spent so many hours with a predator that I was beginning perhaps to th
ink like one to protect myself. I was watchful, observant, and cunning. Cunning, you ask? Yes, in my little world that Phillip had forced upon me I felt like a fox! Foxes are predators for sure, stalking prey. They are built for it with the right tools, but the fox is also hunted by those predators bigger than he.

  So was the fox predator or prey? He is both! He is the in-between. I am the in-between. I knew I had not become this creature overnight. It was created inside me with perceived little victories. Little things that you would think are nothing, but to me they all felt like I was taking something back for myself. With each new freedom I gained throughout the years came personal growth and a better understanding of my captor, my known predator. I learned early on to watch for cues to his moods and adapt to those moods and flow with them to stay alive. I could almost anticipate his moods and emotions.

  I share this now because I want people to understand what goes on when you are in the presence of crazy. It might look like intimacy from the outside, but don’t confuse survival for true connection. So much was invested in keeping up with his thoughts and feelings that it took a toll on my own. I lost myself in all the complexity of the situation and have since my release been slowly building myself back up. I think we all have to do this process of self-discovery throughout our lives. We get so wrapped up in other people and their lives that we forget what is best for self. In my past that is what worked for me, but now that I’m safe, there needs to be a balance of self and then others. It shouldn’t be others and then self. Self should come first, I think, even above kids because if you are not the best person you can be, how can you expect your kids to be?