Jaycee Dugard was just 11 years old when she was abducted by convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife on her way to school.
For the next 18 years, Jaycee was the couple’s prisoner, being held against her will in their Californian home and raped repeatedly.
Two years after she was abducted, Jaycee – then just 13 – became pregnant. She went on to have two daughters with Garrido.
By the time she was finally rescued in 2009, the girls were 11 and 15.
Jaycee shortly after her release in 2009.
Now, seven years after she was freed, Jaycee, 36, has opened up about life with her two daughters.
Despite their challenging start to life, the girls are doing well – one is at university and the other is about to start – and Jaycee is thrilled with the young women they have become.
“I’m so excited for them and so proud of all the challenges they have overcome,” she writes in her new book Freedom: My Book of Firsts, exclusively extracted in People magazine.
“My daughters are both so important to me, and I am so proud of who they are growing up to be. I’ve done my best to protect them over the years, just like any other mother would do for her kids.”
Watch: Woman fights off would-be child kidnapper
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