District Attorney cites psychiatry at root of Jaycee Dugard kidnapping
Citizens Commission on Human Rights’ (CCHR) mission has always been to investigation and expose psychiatric violations of human rights and crime and fraud in the mental health industry. One aspect of this has been to educate the public about the erosion of the justice system that started when psychiatric “expert witnesses” and mental health evaluators were allowed into our courts.
Ignorant of psychiatry’s complete lack of medical and scientific substance, courts of law have put entirely too much value on the psychiatrists’ evaluations and recommendations.
A report issued by the El Dorado County (California) District Attorney this past August solidifies this reality by systematically showing how law enforcement reliance on psychiatrists and other mental health evaluators in the legal system put the public in danger and enabled the commission of one of the most heinous federal crimes in recent memory.
On June 10, 1991, Phillip and Nancy Garrido abducted 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard in South Lake Tahoe, California and held her as a sex slave for the next 18 years, during which Dugard gave birth to two daughters fathered by Garrido.
In his August 2, 2011 report, the El Dorado County District Attorney (DA) points out that in March 1977, Garrido was given a 50-year federal prison sentence for kidnapping a young woman and was concurrently given a Nevada state prison sentence of five years to life for forcibly raping her (he’d handcuffed and sexually assaulted her for hours). Garrido’s “reliable documented criminal history” includes:
- A May 1970 conviction and probation for possession of marijuana and LSD
- A March 1972 conviction and jail sentence for possession of marijuana
- An April 1972 arrest for Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, Possible Rape and Adult Providing Dangerous Drugs to a Minor (case was dismissed)
- The kidnapping and rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1972
- The kidnapping and rape of a 19-year-old young woman in June 1976
- The attempted kidnapping and rape of a 25-year-old woman in November 1976, just hours before the kidnap-rape that got him put in prison
- “Garrido alluded to many additional crimes that may never be solved.”
Further, Garrido later admitted to abducting two other women and to having a deviant sexual interest in young children. Yet, rather than consider his past conduct as grounds for his continued incarceration, the courts relied instead on psychiatrists’ evaluations of Garrido, based largely on Garrido’s own statements about his “rehabilitation.”
One psychologist was willing to recommend parole for the convicted rapist after he’d been in prison a little over a year, finding him to be “a likeable young man whose bearing excites the positive regard of others”[!]
This, the DA points out, was because Garrido knew how to use psychiatry to his advantage: act in the right manner and say the right things and the psych would write a glowing report of the criminal’s rehabilitation and value to society. Psychiatry’s utter lack of medical substance, coupled with the court’s reliance on psychiatric opinion, allowed a sexual psychopath to get out of jail after only eleven years and go mostly unnoticed before, during and after the abduction of Dugard.
The DA does not merely make passing mention of psychiatry in the matter but repeatedly raises the point throughout:
- “When looking at the Garrido case…it is hard to ignore the role that the psychiatric profession played…Garrido manipulated the system with the assistance of the psychiatric profession….”
- “Far too often, the psychiatrist focuses on what the criminal says (rather than their past actions and conduct) to evaluate their risk for future dangerousness. This runs counter to common sense.”
- “…the ultimate failure of the system and its dealing with Garrido was the result of a complete over-reliance of criminal justice system upon the opinions of psychiatric professionals…and a parole system that gives too much weight to a prisoner’s institutional adjustment and psychiatric evaluations….”
- “Far too often, these psychiatric reports are taken as gospel, and overly relied upon by parole boards (and many others in the criminal justice system).”
- “Should these psychiatric evaluation continue to be conducted, however, they should be given less weight in determining parole suitability….”
CCHR urges you to download and read the DA’s entire report, as it contains valuable professional insight into the actual workings (and repeated failings) of psychiatry in the justice system and contains as well the seeds of the reforms that will prevent future tragedies like the abduction of Jaycee Dugard.