Jaycee Dugard Speaks (Video)

Jaycee Dugard is in the spotlight again, but this time it’s on her own terms.

Tonight ABC will air home videos that show the 29-year-old kidnapping victim alive, well and at home with her family six months after she emerged from her captivity.

The video is a public plea for privacy. On the tape, Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, says that while she wants to share her “miracle with the world,” she cannot put the pieces of her family back together while they are being hounded by the press.

“What my family needs is privacy during our healing process.”

The otherwise ordinary scenes of a woman laughing and baking cookies with her half-sisters and hanging stockings by the fireplace are made extraordinary by Dugard’s 18-year nightmare.

In 1991, the then 11-year-old Dugard was kidnapped at a bus stop near her home by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. For nearly two decades, she was held against her will and abused in a makeshift camp in the couple’s backyard in Antioch, Calif.

During her captivity, Dugard gave birth to two daughters, widely thought to be the children of Phillip Garrido, a convicted sex offender. Her daughters do not appear on the video.

The footage is somewhat haunting. “I’ve never gotten to decorate a cookie before,” Dugard says to one of her half-sisters on the tape, according to ABC.

This morning ABC released a teaser of the videos on “Good Morning America,” which it called “the confirmation that Jaycee Dugard and her girls will be OK that so many have been waiting for.”

ABC reports that Dugard has made some progress: She’s earned her GED and now has a driver’s license. And she is speaking out in her own words Friday.

“Hi, I’m Jaycee. I want to thank you for your support, and I’m doing well,” Dugard says on the tape. The words are straightforward and yet remarkable. Though the incredible story has been obsessively followed by the media, her family has been intensely private since she came home.

“When we have more to share, we will,” Probyn says to the camera.”As a mother, I am pleading for our privacy.”

This is a wonderful new beginning for Jaycee and her family and I am very happy for them.

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Jaycee Dugard Speaks (Video)

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