With the recovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard last week, after 18 years in the clutches of kidnapper rapist Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy, one has to wonder if the rest of California's non-parentally abducted children are walking among us, interacting just as casually as Dugard did while assisting Garrido's printing customers. See Jaycee-Lee-Dugard for updates.
Anna Waters (photo one) went missing from her backyard in Half Moon Bay in 1973. Her mother Michaele Benedict keeps positive after all these years. "I feel it is my duty to keep on looking for as long as I can, given the facts (or non-facts, I should say) that we have. This is not a single-minded obsession; I have two other children and five grandchildren and my life has gone on, but of course the question of what happened to Anna remains our great mystery." Benedict describes Anna's personality at 5-years-old as "generous, funny, artistic, kind and sometimes temperamental."
Take a good look at the following photos. These are people who as children 13-years-old or younger were abducted or most likely abducted in California by strangers. This list includes an infant boy, and a few children as young as three. These people may not even know they were abducted.
Click each photo to go to their individual poster at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Girls learn Alissa is mom Jaycee, reports of sex parties, meth
Breakthrough sex and fatherhood changed him claims Garrido, videos
Jaycee Dugard confined in shed, had two daughters by abductor
Jaycee Dugard bore children of sex offender abductor, video, map
Jaycee Dugard reappears 18 years after abduction, updates: arrests, searches
Dugard type abduction rare, common parental abduction as painful