After 18 years as hostage, woman releases first video

SAN FRANCISCO - Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped as an 11-year-old and held in captivity for 18 years, released her first home video Friday, appearing in a Christmas kitchen scene with her mother and half sister and thanking the public for its support.

“Hi. I’m Jaycee,” the 29-year-old Dugard says to the camera in an excerpt of the video. “I want to thank you for your support and I’m doing well … It’s been a long haul, but I’m getting there”.

Terry Probyn, Dugard’s 50-year-old mother, also appears in the video, saying she wished to correct reports that the family was being supported by a church.

“We did accept financial support from an undisclosed benefactor and have no affiliation with any church,” she said. “Please give us the time to heal as a family, without the prying eyes of the photographers and the press”.

Dugard and her two daughters born in captivity - Angel 15, and Starlit, 11 - were freed last year after a campus security officer became suspicious when their alleged captor Phillip Garrido took them with him to pass out religious pamphlets at the University of California, Berkeley.

Garrido and his wife Nancy allegedly abducted Dugard in 1991 and kept her in a ramshackle tent hidden in the backyard of the suburban house in Antioch, California. Garrido is alleged to have repeatedly raped Dugard, fathering her two daughters. Both the Garridos have pleaded not-guilty to 29 felony charges stemming from the case.