If you have not been paying attention, Jaycee Lee Dugard was the girl kidnapped at age 11 by a couple near her bus stop in Lake Tahoe.

Searches for years found nothing, all leads were dead ends and all hope was lost…and then she accidentally emerged 18 years later, alive with two children by her kidnapper, after being held in a prison compound in his back yard in California.

 So what are the lessons?

The first is easy:  Never give up as long as there is a shred of reason to believe.  Hope lives on despite the dreadful silence of not knowing.  Yes, sometimes the resolution is tragic.  By sometimes like this care, or Elizabeth Smart’s case, it is not.  For her, I cannot imagine the hopelessness she felt, the horror her endured.  And yet, a miracle happened and she was freed.

Which leads us to the second lesson:  Sometimes even our imaginations cannot do justice to the absolute sick depravity of people, and the evil they can do.  People like the Garrido’s, or Joseph Duncan (the Groene family murders) are so sick and depraved, so down right twisted and evil, that I cannot fathom how they can live with their crimes, and how anyone can defend them.

It is a shocking tale of modern day slavery in Africa, now imported to the USA via immigration.  Legal immigration by the way.

Poor African families, to pay debts, essentially sell one of their children into slavery.   The case that has spurred this debate is a story by AP writer Rukmini Callimachi about a girl name Shyima who was given as a maid to a wealthy Egyptian family at the age of 10. 

Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door.

They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn’t much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.

But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.

Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family’s crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.

See below for the background, and previous stories.

The sickness continues as the details of what Shasta Groene endured some to light.

Not only did she see her brother killed (shot) but she had to listen to her kidnapper rapist talk about other killings.

In a motion to suppress evidence, the details emerge:

Shooting details revealed at Duncan hearing

Judge hears testimony on motion to suppress evidence

The night she was rescued from killer Joseph Duncan, young Shasta Groene gave such a vivid description of Duncan’s killing of her brother, Dylan, that it left little doubt that 9-year-old Dylan was dead.

Nevertheless, authorities anxiously hunted for Dylan out of fear he might still be alive. Kootenai County Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Brad Maskell said Duncan earlier had left both children chained to a tree in the forest and “our concern was that that situation still existed.”

Maskell was cross-examined Tuesday by defense attorney Thomas Monaghan in federal court in Boise. Duncan’s defense team is trying to suppress evidence gathered using search warrants issued shortly after Shasta’s rescue for a computer and other items in Duncan’s vehicle.

I blogged this back in 2005 (reposted below) as it was happening, and now 2 years later the end is drawing near, but even as it is, nothing is settled, and the closure seems impossible.  How can you move on from something so horrific?

Joseph Duncan, the guy who commiitted this indescribly horrible crime pled guilty in state court previously, and has now pled guilty in Federal court.

Duncan pleads guilty to all counts (emphasis mine)

 Joseph Duncan this morning pleaded guilty to all 10 counts in the federal indictiment against him for kidnapping and molesting two North Idaho children and killing one in 2005.

“I just wanted to say that since my arrest I have never attempted to deny responsibility,” Duncan told the court.

The convicted killer faces a possible death sentence for kidnapping Dylan and Shasta Groene in 2005 and for killing Dylan at a remote Montana camp site.

 Possible?  Good God, if ever there was a poster child for the death penalty, this is it.

In a world where stupid parent tricks happen all the time, this one takes the cake.

It’s a pathetic thing when the kid has more bloody common sense then the parent.

Mom arrested for DUI after boy calls 911 from car

An 8-year-old boy riding in a car with his mom called 911 several times to report that she wasn’t “acting normal,” leading to her arrest for investigation of drunken driving and other charges, authorities said.

Paulette Lynn Spears, 33, was arrested Saturday after she drove to a fire station and said she had a medical problem.

Gross stupidity is not a medical problem, otherwise they would cure it.

Guided by her son’s description of what he could see from the car, as well as by global positioning technology to track the phone calls, deputies arrived at the station less than a minute later.

“He said ’I don’t know where we are, and Mom’s not acting normal,’” sheriff’s Sgt. Randon M. Walker said.

The call has been issued for Diane Sawyers resignation over a Primetime special that aired last Friday.  This is a case that illustrates the cold hearted callous disregard for people that the news sometimes exhibits in order to get a "good story."  And their actions have ensured a child abuser gets to go unpunished.

During the filming of a story on dysfunctional step families, ABC cameras caught a beating of a teenage girl by her father on video tape…and did nothing about it….for 4 years

Calls for Sawyer to Resign After Teen Beating Report

The shocking beating of a teenage girl by her father that aired during a Diane Sawyer report about dysfunctional stepfamilies has set off a firestorm.

State police officials in upstate Lake Placid say they are going over the tape of last Friday’s "Primetime" news magazine to determine if charges can be brought against the natural father, a Iraq War military reservist, and the teen’s stepmother.

The investigation — which includes the local Franklin County DAs office, police said — was only part of the fallout from the broadcast.

I can’t even begin to say how this makes me feel.  I won’t say this has anything to do with Gay Marriage except in that the breaking of a traditional role was a factor.  That point I think needs to be considered.  But I hope no one tries to blame traditional marriage as a part of the problem that made a 4 year old not want to call a lesbian daddy.

In reality the issue is parental substitution.  The child had a daddy, and he didn’t want to replace that person in the name.  I have a blended family, and we avoided any insistence that my kids call her mommy, or hers call me daddy.  My ex-wife apparently did insist on that, and my son wasn’t happy with it.   

Had she been the boys step-father, the end result would have been the same, and no one would be screaming about gays in the story. 

And make no mistake, the fact it was a lesbian couple and the issue was the child calling one of them Daddy, that’s what made this news.

This is about stupid and sick people.  Period.

I am pissed, angry and enraged.

This started in May 2005 in Coeur d’Alene Idaho, where the bodies of three people were found bound and beaten to death, Brenda Kay Groene, 40, her son, Slade, 13, and her boyfriend, Mark Edward McKenzie, 37.

This is bad enough, but there were two children missing, Shasta Groene, age 8 and Dylan Groene, age 10, who were believed to have been home when the murders happened.

Amber alerts and manhunts, searches and tips turned up nothing.

Then, July 2nd, an alert waitress at a Denny’s in Coeur d’Alene saw a girl she believed to be Shasta. She notified authorities and delayed their order till the police arrived. It was her.

Her brother Dylan was not with them, and is presumed dead. Investigators have found remains they believe are his in Montana. DNA tests are pending.

She was with a man named Joseph Edward Duncan, 42, who has been charged with kidnapping, and is the only suspect in the murders. Duncan is a convicted, high risk sex offender.