Saturday, August 27, 2016

Woman held captive for 18 years CAN'T sue government for failing to supervise kidnapper on parole

Jaycee Lee Dugard
Jaycee Dugard was just 11 when she was abducted in 1991
A woman who was kidnapped and help captive for 18 years by a convicted sex offender cannot sue the US government for failing to properly supervise him on parole, a court has ruled.
Jaycee Dugard was just 11 when she was snatched near to her California home by Phillip Garrido, who kept her prisoner in a warren of sheds and tents in his backyard.
She was repeatedly raped and gave birth to two daughters in captivity in the northern California community of Antioch.
Dugard's plight was eventually revealed in 2009 when Garrido brought her and her children to a parole office that had been contacted by police at the University of California, Berkeley, who had become suspicious of him.

Reuters
Garrido was jailed for 431 years to life
Authorities later apologised for missing numerous chances to find him in violation of his parole and rescue Dugard and her daughters.
Dugard was abducted in June 1991 as she walked home from school near South Lake Tahoe.
She received a $20 million settlement from the state of California.
Phillip Garrido Backyard (Pic:Getty)
Dugard was held captive in tents in Garrido's backyard
She gave birth to two daughters in the makeshift prison
She separately sued the federal government, which oversaw Garrido's parole beginning in 1988, on the grounds that if its agents had done their job adequately he would not have been free to kidnap her three years later.
That lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge, prompting Dugard's appeal to the 9th Circuit.
WENNJaycee Lee Dugard
Dugard was freed in 2009
A three-member panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided 2-1 that while the crimes against Jaycee Dugard were horrific, the interaction of state and federal statutes did not hold the government liable for the incompetence of parole officers in such cases.
"While our hearts are with Ms. Dugard, the law is not," Judge John Owens wrote in a 14-page ruling upholding a lower court that dismissed the lawsuit.
Judge William Smith dissented from that opinion, arguing that his colleagues in the majority had improperly applied the so-called Federal Claims Tort Act.
Jaycee Dugard for People magazine
Garrido was twice arrested for kidnapping and sexual assault in the 1970s before he was convicted in 1977 of abducting a woman in South Lake Tahoe and driving her to Nevada, where he hid her in a shed and raped her.
He was released from federal prison on parole in 1988, with his supervision to be taken over by the state of California in 1999.
According to the appeals ruling parole officers failed to report some 70 drug-related parole violations by Garrido to their superiors

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