She should have been in high school and going on first dates, maybe leaving home for college, finding her first apartment, falling in love - growing up.
But Jaycee Lee Dugard, now 29, spent her formative years in captivity. Kidnapped at age 11 in South Lake Tahoe, she gave birth to two daughters when she was just a teenager, and likely lived with the near-constant threat of fear and abuse for 18 years.
She was found Wednesday in Antioch, and Thursday saw her mother for the first time since June 1991. But her recovery has barely started, say experts in child psychiatry and post-traumatic stress.
How well she progresses, along with her two children, depends on the quality of professional help she receives, and the strength of her support network.
"Someone asked me if I think she'll ever have a normal life. I'm not sure 'normal' is the word," said Paula Fass, a history professor at UC Berkeley and author of the book "Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America." "But let's hope she can still live decently and reconnect with that earlier life. The challenge will be to try to integrate these two parts of her life - before she was taken, and her children now - in a way that can be meaningful."
Few cases like it
A case like Dugard's is virtually unheard of. There are examples of children being taken and held captive for months or even years, but none as long as Dugard, and none who were taken as children and returned as adults.
The fact that Dugard now has two children - both the offspring of her accused captor, Phillip Garrido, according to police - further complicates her case. Several child psychologists and kidnapping experts compared Dugard's captivity to the case of an Austrian woman who was found last year after being imprisoned by her own father for 24 years and giving birth to seven of his children.
Dugard "was kept for 18 years, and through an important period in child development, when kids are busy becoming their own persons. It's a difficult period of time to miss out on," said Dr. Stuart Lustig, a UCSF child psychiatrist.
Dugard almost definitely suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a condition in which captives become sympathetic to their captors. Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, told media outlets that she has expressed guilt for bonding with Garrido.
It's common for kidnapped children to feel some compassion for their kidnappers, who abuse them but also become their only caretaker, child psychiatrists said. That creates a cognitive dissonance that isn't easily resolved, especially for children who don't have the life experience to understand what's happened to them.
"Children in this situation need to protect themselves, and the person who is the perpetrator is the one providing the comfort. Identifying with the aggressor feels like protecting yourself," said Dr. Victor Carrion, an expert in post-traumatic stress in children at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "This is not a conscious decision. It's something that happens in survival mode."
Probable PTSD
It's also likely that Dugard is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder - starting with the initial trauma of being kidnapped and kept up over years of abuse and confinement, Carrion said.
According to police, Dugard has lived in an encampment of tents and sheds in Garrido's backyard for most of the last two decades, with little interaction with people other than her captors and her children.
Her daughters, too, were isolated from the outside world - they never attended school or visited a doctor, police said. Just as Dugard must find a way to reintegrate with her family and society, so must her children, child psychiatrists said.
The children, ages 11 and 15, will need to be evaluated - psychiatrists will look at their developmental progress, such as their ability to learn, their language skills, and how they relate to others. The children may also complicate Dugard's recovery because they'll serve as a constant reminder of her captivity, child psychiatrists said. It may be difficult for Dugard to separate her love for her daughters from her complicated feelings toward Garrido.
But it's also possible, Fass said, that having raised two children may help Dugard in her recovery. The children could give her focus in the years ahead, and they may have offered her some small strength while she was held captive, by allowing her to care for someone else.
"Let's assume that the children were her company, and allowed her to exercise her caretaking ability," Fass said. "I would think those are two strengths that could be played on in her recovery. She wasn't entirely isolated, she wasn't just by herself. She was taking care of the children."
The key to reuniting Dugard with her family, experts say, will be to take it slowly. Her mother and stepfather can't expect her to be the 11-year-old girl who was taken 18 years ago, and at the same time Dugard can't expect her family to be the same.
When families are reunited, it's common for everyone to feel some guilt, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The children feel guilty for not being able to escape or for bonding with their kidnappers, and the parents feel guilty for losing them in the first place.
Allen said it will be critical for Dugard and her family to be patient with one another, and especially with Dugard's daughters.
Must start over
"Parent and child typically want to return things to the way they were, and what we've found is that - particularly with these kinds of spans - families have to start all over getting to know each other," Allen said. "The single most important thing for a parent, even when your child is 29 years old, is to love your child unconditionally."
Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped seven years ago at age 14 and returned to her family nine months later, said in an interview on CNN on Friday that spending quiet time with her family was critical to her recovery. She believes it's possible to be happy and free again and to not let "this horrible event take over and consume the rest of your life."
Allen said recovery will be difficult, but he's hopeful for Dugard and her family.
"Despite the 18 years that have been lost, despite the theft of Jaycee's childhood, she's alive. She's young, and she has hope for the future," Allen said. "It's a very complex situation, but we really believe there's real hope here."
