magazines cut out in different positions with penises taped on from other magazines. He looks at them and talks dirty to them, using words that are bad, some of which I have never heard before. He keeps doing the same thing over and over. When will this nightmare end? He also flips through the channels on the TV. He says he’s looking for anything with a little girl with shorts on. I think it is finally morning now. The sun is coming through the windows that are covered with towels. I can see the sun through some of the cracks. He looks at the time and he says it’s time to have sex. He tells me to lie down on my back. Part of me is relieved to get it over with. I was dreading it but want to go to sleep. I’m so tired. He gets on top of me and tells me he’s going to talk really dirty to me and for me not to be scared. He says he’s still the same person. He just needs to release the “monkey on his back.” I can’t help but cry, but they are silent tears. He fucks me as hard as he can it seems like. He uses that word a lot. My head is being pushed in between the couch and the pullout bed. I feel like I can’t breathe. He is calling me a fucking whore and a cunt and other things. I want to be somewhere else, but I am here and I must not panic. It hurts more when I try to struggle, so I try not to get away from him, but it’s hard not to want to push away from his sweaty disgusting body. Everything will be okay I tell myself. He will be the nice person soon. The one that likes to make me laugh and brings me good things to eat. I feel his release in me and finally it is over. He asks if I’m okay and I look at him and burst into tears. He takes me in his arms and says it’s okay, that he is done, and that I can get cleaned up and go to sleep. He won’t bother me like this for a while. I am so scared I don’t know what to think. I want to believe him. He releases me to get up and put on his pants. He leaves to get me fresh water to bathe with. I am left alone. I hear the lock as it clicks. I wonder why he bothers. Where would I go? I don’t know where I am. I feel so alone. Who would want me now? He comes back with the water and I get up, I am so sore. I am also bleeding again. He says it looks like I started my period. Tomorrow he will bring me some tampons and show me how to use them. For now he gives me some paper towels to stick in my underwear. I feel a little better now that I am dressed. He takes me back to the studio and says he will be back later with something really good to eat. He leaves and I am scared, tired and alone.
To see myself in that moment is very hard now. I was there and all this crap happened, but as I look back I can’t help but look forward. I live in the present just as I always have and when I look back like this I see a very scared little girl just trying to survive. I wanted to go home to my mom more than anything, but I didn’t know how. He said he took me so that he wouldn’t have to hurt anyone else. In a way he made me feel special. I felt needed. Why I felt I needed that from this man I don’t know. He would say terrible things like he would teach me how to be the best “sex slave” ever. And then there were other times that he was a very nice person. It confused me. When he would use bad language, it would scare me and make me feel horrible. One time he even threatened that he was going to sell me. This made me so scared. I didn’t really know what it meant. When I asked why, he said I wasn’t really doing the things that he wanted me to do. He said I cried too much and that it was hard for him to act out his fantasies when I was uncooperative and made him feel bad. I remember I begged him to please don’t make me go with someone else, that I would try harder, and he could do anything he wanted and I would not fight. He said he would have to think about it. He said that these people that he was going to sell me to were planning to put me in a cage. It would be really bad for me. That it would be better for me if I stayed, but he didn’t know if that was the thing for him to do. I remember shaking so hard on the couch. I didn’t want to be put in a cage. He left me thinking that that was what was going to happen to me. When he returned that day and said we were going to go on a “run,” I didn’t dare ask if he had changed his mind. I just tried to do everything just the way he told me. He never followed through on any of his promises. I will probably never forget feeling as afraid as I did that day. He never mentioned it again. Even when I went back to doing everything he wanted, I tried to rebel in my own little ways. Like sometimes I wouldn’t put in as much effort as I could here and there. I wouldn’t jack him off as fast as I could, forgetting (on purpose) to put lipstick on, and fake sleeping whenever he was engrossed in the TV. Little things that he wouldn’t notice, but I still felt good inside for knowing I wasn’t trying my best. I knew when to get serious, though, I was beginning to get a sense of his moods and when I could and when I could not mess around with him.
The “runs” were some of the most horrible moments of my life. I can’t think of a good moment even when a “run” was over. I always knew there’d be a next time. I could see no end in sight. The horridness of being alone was always there, too. I really hated and despised it when he would leave me tied up in a certain position by those eye hooks that screw into the wall. He would screw them into the wall and then lift my legs with straps in different positions. One night he had been working on the position, trying to get it right for hours and realized he needed to go pick up Nancy from the nightshift where she worked a convalescent home. He said he was just going to leave me tied up because it was the perfect position. He was gone for a while. My legs were in such an awkward position, I got leg cramps and the straps hurt my ankles. I was relieved when he got back, I wanted to get it over with so I could be done and go to bed. Those were horrible times. I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for him. He was always saying what a good person he was and he didn’t know how else to help his problem. I needed to help him so others wouldn’t be hurt. He said, society didn’t help people like him and that there were a lot of men out there in the world with the same problem as his. He would apologize to me. He would cry after he was done fucking me and beg my forgiveness. He said it would make him feel better. For a reason I can’t name, I knew in those moments that it was important to my survival that I never truly show how much I was hurting inside. I don’t know why, but after that I kept my feelings to myself.
Years later I learned it’s the little things that add up to make a person. Back then I couldn’t see the little things that added up to the bigger picture of who Phillip was on the inside. I only saw what he wanted me to see. And that was a misunderstood guy with a problem that nobody wanted to help him with. I think he felt life was cheating him of what he wanted. Deep inside Phillip Garrido is a very selfish man, looking only to gratify himself as much as possible while still projecting to the world a selfless and caring man.
The first year was the worst. I hated when he would videotape me and him having sex or me doing some other degrading thing. The camera would always have to be in the right spot and positioned just right. It was horrible. He would always assure me that the videos were just for him and nobody else would ever see them. He used them, he said, to give me a break. Years later when the sex became not as frequent, he said that he had destroyed the tapes and got rid of them. I believed him. Little did I know they were still on the property, only partly destroyed.
We called the first room I was taken to when Phillip kidnapped me the “studio” and later when the “runs” (long days of sex) started and he introduced me to the second building in the backyard, we called that “next door.”
Funny, how I can look back now, and notice how the “secret backyard” didn’t really look so “secret.” It wasn’t even that well hidden. I was in the middle of a neighborhood. There were neighbors all around; the only thing that was camouflaged was the gate leading to the second backyard. I can’t understand why Phillip’s parole officers didn’t know anything about the property and the size of it. It makes me believe no one cared or was even really looking for me. Below is a diagram.
Nancy
I’m so hungry that’s all I can think of. There is nothing good on television. It’s so nice having a TV to watch whenever I want to; I really shouldn’t complain. After the last “run,” he let me stay “next door.” It’s a lot bigger than the studio room I was in before. There is lots of stuff to explore in here. Phillip has started to call me Snoopy. When I asked him why he said because I ask a lot of questions and he knows I’ve been snooping around his desk in here. He laughs and doesn’t seem to mind. I wonder how he knew I had gone through his desk? It frightens me how he
