Long-term abductions require years of therapy, support

SAN JOSE, Calif.-When 14-year-old Victoria Gardner emotionally collapsed after being abducted and raped in 1968, the only remedy doctors in San Jose offered was a series of electro-shock treatments to help her forget her horrible experience. She turned them down.Four decades later, Jaycee Dugard, the Antioch, Calif., woman abducted 18 years ago and freed this week, will have more psychological help to deal with her trauma, thanks to significant advances in the therapy field known as "recovery and reunification."

Already, a San Francisco Bay Area counselor who works with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has been tapped to help Dugard and her family through the first few days of the unexpected and long-delayed reunion.

But experts-and families with similar experiences-say it will take many years of crucial professional support to cope with victims' issues, from anger at parents for failing to keep them safe to ambivalence about their abductors. Often there's even guilt for being too paralyzed with fear to run away.

"Today, there's a lot more help, but still, the fears and nightmares will come," said Gardner, who remains troubled-41 years later-about her ordeal at the hands of a physician inside a San Jose hospital over a three-day period.

Dugard was gone for nearly two decades, and experts say she can look forward to the first stage of her recovery/reunification-which is likely to be euphoria.

"There's a honeymoon period, a sense of wild joy, like your best dream has come true," said Georgia Hilgeman-Hammond, who founded the Vanished Children's Alliance in San Jose in 1976 after her 13-month-old daughter was abducted. Her daughter was found four years later.

"But it's not 'happily ever after,' " she said. "You find out they're not the same person. There's confusion, loyalty issues, like 'Why didn't mom or dad find me sooner?' "

Dugard was 11 when she was snatched near her home near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in 1991. On Thursday, she surfaced with the convicted sex offender who police say took her all those years ago and forced her to live in a shed and tents and to bear him two daughters.

Even though Dugard is 29 now and has the two girls, 11 and 15, fathered by her abductor, Philip Garrido, her emotional age is likely to be much younger because she has been utterly powerless for so long, experts say.

The sudden freedom can be overwhelming, according to research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. Families should not expect their rescued children to be able to cope with socializing right away, including everything from welcome-home celebrations to big family reunions.

Recovered victims are more likely to act withdrawn or hostile, probably because they're scared of being re-abducted. Parents also are urged not to criticize abductors in front of victims because the victims often bond with their captors and are ambivalent about them.

"They've been through kind of a brainwashing," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "They've been brutalized and told they would be killed and their families would be killed. The human instinct is to do whatever it takes to prevent getting killed, including not trying to run away."

Gardner said she understands that self-preservation instinct.

"No one understands what Jaycee is going through unless they've been a victim," she said. "The fear is so immobilizing."

In 1968 when a doctor kidnapped and raped her, she said, incidents like that were rarely discussed publicly. "There was no mental health for kids then," she said.

Experts know so much more about the psychology of these kinds of crimes because so many American children are abducted-which the government defines as taken against their will through physical force or threat for at least an hour. About 258,000 children are abducted in the United States every year, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The vast majority-about 200,000-are parental abductions. Most of the remaining 58,000 abductions are resolved within 24 hours.

Then there are the so-called "stereotypical kidnappings" like Jaycee's, in which children are taken more than 50 miles away or taken overnight or held for ransom or taken with the intent to keep permanently or kill. There are only 115 of those a year. As expected, the recovery period is not short. Abductees and their families can get help from state victim compensation funds with considerable expense of long-term treatment.

"We preach patience," Allen said. "You don't take a shot or pill to get over this."

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(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).