Jaycee Dugard was first placed in a soundproofed shed at the back of the property. She was locked inside. Garrido threatened her with dogs. He told her that animals would attack her if she tried to escape. He raped her.
Over time, the physical arrangement of the compound evolved. The soundproofed shed gave way to a network of tents and outbuildings in the concealed rear portion of the property. Garrido erected fences that created separate internal spaces. From the street, and even from a casual inspection, the rear portion of the property was not visible.
Garrido was a methamphetamine user for significant portions of his time with Jaycee. The California Inspector General’s later report on the supervision failures would note that there were documented drug-related issues in his background that California parole agents never obtained because they failed to retrieve his federal parole file.
At some point during the captivity—the specific circumstances are not documented in any public report—Dugard gave birth to a daughter in August 1994. She was fourteen years old. She gave birth to a second daughter in November 1997, at age seventeen. Both girls were fathered by Phillip Garrido.
These children grew up on the Garrido property, homeschooled by Dugard within the compound. They knew Garrido as a father figure and Nancy Garrido as their grandmother. They had no meaningful contact with the outside world.
Over the years, Garrido allowed Dugard and the girls incrementally more freedom within the hidden compound. She was at times permitted to tend a garden. She helped with tasks related to Garrido’s small printing business, which operated from the property. The arrangement was one of profound isolation dressed in the language of ordinary domestic life—an enclosure that had its own internal routines, its own household rhythms, within walls that no one in the outside world knew existed.