Jaycee Dugard Was Held Captive for 18 Years — Details of Her Kidnapping Are Shocking

It's easy to look back on a particular moment and wonder what you could have done differently, but for Jaycee Dugard, the answer for one day is nothing. On June 10, 1991, the then 11-year-old girl was walking to a school bus stop in Meyers, Calif., when she was abducted.

She wouldn't be found for another 18 years. That day was not up to her, but rather the people who stole her life.

In an interview with ABC News in July 2011, Dugard talked about what she had to endure from her captors while she was being held hostage.

"There's a switch that I had to shut off," she explained, "so, it's just ... you do what you have to do to survive."

What Dugard had to survive was unimaginable abuse that some would describe as torture. What happened to her? Here's what we know.

While testifying at the trial for the individuals who kidnapped her, Dugard said she initially thought a car was pulling up behind her because someone needed directions, per The New York Times.

Phillip Garrido got out of the vehicle and used a stun gun to subdue Dugard. "I stumbled back into the bushes," she recalled. After being tossed into the backseat, Dugard heard Garrido say to someone else, "I can’t believe we got away with it." That someone was his wife, Nancy Garrido.

The Garridos lived in Antioch, Calif., a Bay Area suburb. Dugard said she remembered begging the couple not to kill her and telling them her family didn't have a lot of money for a ransom.

"I just wanted to go home," she said. For the next 18 years, Dugard would live in a backyard compound that consisted of a tent as well as a "small, sparsely furnished two-room building," per The Times. Garrido repeatedly raped Dugard, which resulted in the births of two daughters in 1994 and 1997.

Eventually, the Garridos moved into the shed with Dugard, which made her feel less alone. When she first got pregnant at age 13, she had no idea what was going on and had to be told about the baby, reported ABC News.

"I didn't know I was in labor," she told Diane Sawyer. Although she had been watching videos about giving birth, nothing could have prepared Dugard for the pain. "And then I saw her. She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn't alone anymore."

Dugard said that Garrido stopped sexually assaulting her in 1997 after she gave birth to her second daughter. She described that time as "normal" and said they acted like a family. During her testimony, Dugard was shown a journal she kept at the time in which she berated herself for not trying to escape. "I couldn’t leave. I had the girls."

What Dugard didn't know was that Garrido was convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in 1977, per the Daily News. He only served 12 years before being released in 1988.

When Garrido abducted Dugard, he was on parole and regularly had to check in with his parole officer. In August 2009, Garrido brought Dugard's daughters with him to UC Berkeley because he wanted to hold an event there, per ABC News. Garrido's erratic behavior caused UC Berkeley campus police to look into him.

After discovering that Garrido was on parole for rape, they reached out to his parole officer. For reasons we may never know, Garrido brought Dugard with him to that meeting and instructed her to tell the parole officer her name was Alissa.

Eventually, Dugard broke down and told them who she really was. Garrido was eventually sentenced to 431 years in prison while his wife got 36 years to life, reported The New York Times.