Parole Agents Should Have Found Jaycee Dugard, Report Says
Nov. 4, 2009— -- California parole officers failed to properly supervise the man accused of holding Jaycee Dugard captive for 18 years and missed numerous opportunities to free her, according to a scathing report released today by the Office of the Inspector General.
A monthslong investigation headed by California Inspector General David R. Shaw turned up more than a dozen failures on the part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which had been assigned to supervise Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender, for the last 10 years.
"Our review shows that Garrido committed numerous parole violations and that the department failed to properly supervise Garrido and missed numerous opportunities to discover his victims," the report read.
Among the departments shortcomings in the Garrido case:
The CDCR took charge of Garrido's supervision in 1999 after he was released from federal supervision. Garrido was convicted in the 1970s of raping and kidnapping a California woman.
In a letter to Shaw, CDCR Secretary Matthew Cates said he agreed that the state needed to improve its parole system and had plans to uprade to a risk-base system that will ensure the most dangerous predators get the closest supervision.
"We regret," he wrote, "he was not caught sooner."
Dugard was discovered in August, 18 years after her 1991 kidnapping. She was rescued after Garrido, 58, took two daughters he had fathered with Dugard to hand out religious material at the UC Berkley campus, tipping off two police employees there.
A background checked showed that Garrido was a registered sex offender and his nearly two-decades old crime unraveled when he showed up at a meeting with his parole officer with Dugard and the two girls in tow.
Dugard and her family did not comment on the specifics of the report, but issued a statement on overall findings.
"The inspector general's report clearly sets out many missed opportunities to bring a much earlier end to the nightmares of Jaycee Dugard and her family," a family spokesperson, who asked not to be identified, told ABCNews.com today, reading from a statement. "We expect that the appropriate authorities will take the necessary action to ensure this never happens again. In addition, Jaycee is fully committed to holding Mr. Garrido accountable for the crimes he has committed."
