Justice, of a sort

The two individuals who snatched an 11 year old girl off the street, raped her, and forced her to live in their back yard for 18 years with the two daughters she conceived by the 'male' individual have been sentenced to long stretches in prison.

Philip Garrido has been sentenced to 431 years to life in prison, and his wife Nancy Garrido has been sentenced to 36 years.  I'm hoping she lives a long life and serves out every second of those 36 years.  As for him, I hope he sets a Guinness World Record for longevity and suffers every day.

When this story first broke, it really caught my eye.  Even more than the fact that a missing child had been found 18 years later, or that California law enforcement personnel had been to the house on multiple occasions without doing anything, it was the location.  When we left North Dakota, we eventually settled in Antioch, where the Garrido's would eventually hold Miss Duggard.  My step-father had grown up a couple of towns west of there, and he wanted to be close to his family.

All of this happened after I graduated and left for the Army, but my little sisters, one of which has a bit of a resemblance to the victim and was close to her in age, still lived in Antioch for several years.  If these sick bastards had decided to go hunting a little closer to home, it could have been my baby sister in that shed. 

The thing that really sent chills up my spine is I know the area where the house is.  I ran with several guys from that neighborhood, and dated a girl who lived a couple of blocks away.  When I read about what happened there, I could easily visualize the very small world that Jaycee Duggard lived in for a very long time.

As a father, this scenario is probably close to my worst nightmare.  All dads tell ourselves that we'll die defending our kids if necessary, but what do you do if someone snatches them when they're out of your sight, or when they're too far away for you to help and protect them?   How long do you keep hoping that they'll turn up before you hold a funeral mass?  And how, once your child is found, do you contain your rage and let the criminal justice system punish them rather than taking matters into your own hands and getting real justice for your child?

I sincerely pray that neither I nor any of you ever have to find out.  I also hope that these two live a very, very long time and come to know suffering that in some way compares to what they did to a beautiful little girl who was just trying to get to her school bus.