Jaycee Dugard's Family Broke; Church Paying Their Rent
Feb. 12 2010, Published 12:41 p.m. ET
Jaycee Dugard’s family is broke and is in dire need of financial support.
After surviving 18 years as a kidnap victim, and giving birth to two daughters by her captor, Jaycee has returned to a difficult financial existence.
A California church has been paying rent for the Dugard’s and offered to pay it for a year, according to East Bay Fellowship Associate Pastor Mari Hanes. The church had learned about the family's financial difficulties from a police officer who belongs to the church.
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The Danville church has paid Dugard’s rent for the past four months thanks to donations from its members. The Mercury News reports that people who have been helping the famly say Dugard and her children are in a safe, private and rural location not that far from where she was held captive.
The church’s leaders have previously helped victims of human trafficking. Hanes said many people mistakenly thought that Jaycee was ok financially because she appeared in one magazine article after miraculously being rescued from her ordeal.
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But Hanes says that simply is not the case and the family is in bad financial shape.
In California, the most any abduction victim ever receives in financial aid from the state is $2,000, she said. The house that police chose for Jaycee and her children has a monthly rent of $2,500.
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Media attention does not always translate into money for the victim, either.
"People think once your name is out there you get paid -- but unless you have (attorneys) to broker a deal for you, that's really not the case," Hanes said.
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In October, Dugard -- who was kidnapped in 1991 in South Lake Tahoe and found alive in August at the Antioch home of suspected kidnapper Phillip Garrido -- appeared in People Magazine as part of a story about the case.
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The publicity gave many the false impression that she had profited substantially from the story, Hanes said.
