Washington, August 28: A woman who was kidnapped more than 18 years ago was today being re-united with her family, after escaping from a couple who apparently forced her to spend a large portion of her adolescence locked in their garden shed.
Jaycee Lee Duggard, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of 11 when she was abducted, in broad daylight, while waiting for a school bus, surfaced on Wednesday after wandering into a parole office in a town near San Francisco.
In a case that bears chilling echoes to that of Joseph Fritzl – the Austrian electrician who kept his daughter in a cellar – police believe Ms Duggard was locked away in a darkened building for several years, and repeatedly raped by her captors.
–Agencies