Jaycee Dugard tells: My kidnappers won’t ruin the rest of my life

Jaycee Dugard survived 18 years in captivity at the hands of the depraved couple who snatched her off the street when she was an innocent 11-year-old on her way to school.

Now 36 and enjoying her freedom after her miraculous rescue, she is refusing to be caught up in bitterness or negative emotions – instead choosing to embrace all the good things that her new life has brought her. And that includes raising the two daughters she gave birth to while being held against her will in her kidnappers’ squalid backyard.

‘It feels so good to know that I can face whatever life throws at me, because I’ve been through the worst kind of hell already – and survived,’ says Jaycee, in her forthcoming book Freedom: My Book of Firsts – exclusively extracted in US magazine People.

A big part of her recovery from the horrors she endured has been her refusal to stay caught in the past – not matter how scarring that time with evil couple Phillip and Nancy Garrido may have been. But she does admit to thinking about how things could have been very different, had she not crossed paths with her kidnappers back in June 1991.

“Do I wonder what my life would have been like if Phillip and Nancy Garrido never snatched me?” she writes in her book. “You bet your last dollar I do!”