New photo shows Jaycee Dugard enjoying freedom

Americans have reacted with amazement to this week's People magazine cover. It shows 29-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, the young woman who emerged this summer from 18 years' imprisonment at the hands of her kidnapper, smiling, looking young for her age, and apparently recovering well from her ordeal.

It is the first new photograph of Dugard released by her family since she was freed and her adbuctor Phillip Garrido and his wife were taken into custody two months ago. Until now, all press reports of Dugard's story have been accompanied by a picture taken before her abduction in South Lake Tahoe City at the age of 11, showing a freckle-faced schoolgirl.

Erika Schulte, a spokesman for the Dugard family, told reporters: "She just radiates. I was thrilled when I saw the photo because it was the perfect representation of what she looks like and it speaks to her joy with being with her family now and looking forward to her new life."

According to People magazine, Jaycee is living in seclusion with her 50-year-old mother, Terry Probyn. She rides horses, cooks and is thinking of collaborating on a book.

"She's a grown-up," said Schulte, "she's a mother and a sister and a daughter. If you walked into the room and didn't know the circumstances, it would seem, I think, like any other family."

When Jaycee was set free, she had with her the two girls, aged 15 and 11, she had given birth to during her imprisonment, both fathered by Garrido, who faces rape as well as abduction charges.

Schulte admitted that it was unclear whether the girls, named Starlit and Angel, brought up secretly in the backyard of Garrido's semi-rural home north of San Francisco, were fully aware of what they and their mother had been through. But "they very much seem to me to be enjoying the life they have now," she said.

Earlier reports quoted Jaycee Lee's aunt, Tina Dugard, saying that, despite Jaycee's circumstances and the fact that her education came to an end at the age of 11, she had managed to teach the two girls to read and write. "They are educated and bright," said Tina. "It's clear they've been on the internet... and that Jaycee did a great job with the limited resources she had." ·