California’s government may be on the brink of going broke, but lawmakers there were able to find $20 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a California woman.
Jaycee Dugard, now 30, was held captive for 20 years by a pedophile who the state was supposed to be monitoring. Dugard and her children are now multi-millionaires.
Jaycee Dugard’s daughters Angel, 15, (bottom, right) and Starlit, 11, (above, right), are already taller than she is.
A woman held captive for nearly two decades by a rapist out on parole will receive $20 million from the state of California for her ordeal, during which she bore two children to the man whom officials were supposedly monitoring.
Lawmakers approved the settlement Thursday for Jaycee Dugard, now 30, and her two daughters, who resurfaced last August after being held in a secret backyard by a suspect identified by authorities as Phillip Garrido.
“It is compensation for three people for the rest of their lives who have been horribly damaged over a period of 17 or 18 years,” mediator Daniel Weinstein told The Associated Press.
Dugard and her daughters, ages 15 and 12, filed claims in February, saying parole agents with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began supervising Garrido in 1999 but didn’t discover them.
The Dugard family members claimed psychological, physical and emotional damages. “I can’t emphasize enough that we’ve got to be much more prudent in terms of how we provide oversight for released prisoners in the state of California,” Assemblyman Ted Gaines, R-Granite Bay, said. Read More…
