Jaycee Dugard Rapist Phillip Garrido Linked To Madeleine McCann Abduction
MADELEINE McCann Watch: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at Madeleine McCann in the news – Jaycee Dugard And Our Maddie. Phillip Craig Garrido and his wife Nancy Garrido took Jaycee Dugard.
WHEN Jaycee Lee Dugard went missing she was her own person. Now she has returned to a post-Madeleine McCann world and the media is able to make sense of her abduction, rape and impregnation by known paedophile Phillip Garrido (he fathered two children with Jaycee Dugard) and his wife Nancy. Such is the impoverished state of journalism that the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard needs context:
Chris Ayres beat the world to the punch by linking Jaycee Dugard to Madeleine McCann and now his words appear in the Irish Independent, albeit under the title:
US ‘Maddy’ turns up 18 years after her abduction
The blonde, blue-eyed girl was 11 years old when she was abducted from outside her home near Lake Tahoe, California.
Blonde hair and blue eyes keeps the media interested.
In the Mirror, Anton Antonowicz hears of Jaycee Dugard and does as any jobbing hack does: he call the McCanns’ PR, but only after first looking for an easy comparison. So in “ABUSED BY U.S. FRITZL” we get:
Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, said it gave hope that one day daughter Madeleine, snatched in Portugal in 2007, could be found safe and well.
He said: “They are extremely pleased. It strengthens their determination never to stop looking for Madeleine.”
The McCanns are the media’s benchmark for missing children. Ben Needham’s mum was not contacted. Jeremy Vargas’s mum was not contacted. Nor were many, by others. You want blonde and blue eyed. Here it is.
Elsewhere the buzz phrase is “media frenzy”. See how many times you can spot it in the following reports.
Belfast Telegraph: “’Kidnapper’ fathered two children with missing woman found after 18 years
The arrest on Wednesday took place in bizarre circumstances. Mr Garrido was apparently brought in for questioning to a State Parole Office in Concord after a member reported suspicious activity involving him the previous day on the campus of UC Berkeley, a local university. After what police described as “diligent questioning,” it soon emerged that the woman who was accompanying Garrido to the Parole Office was the missing Jaycee Lee Duggard. The two children were his.
Ending:
Much like the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which sparked a similar media frenzy in the UK two years ago…
The Independent’s Guy Adams, in Los Angeles, tells readers:
In a case that bears chilling echoes to that of Joseph Fritzl – the Austrian electrician who kept his daughter in a cellar – police believe Ms Duggard was locked away in a darkened building for several years, and repeatedly raped by her captors.
Fritzl. Check.
Much like the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, which sparked a similar media frenzy in the UK two years ago…
The Telegraph’s Alex Spillius is on the scene in, er, Washington.
Spillius is nowher near the scene of the story, but he does have access to his recent memories and plays a game of Tabloid Bingo:
The case, which attracted the same kind of media frenzy that the disappearance of Madeleine McCann generated two years ago in Britain, immediately sparked comparisons to that of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl held for more than eight years in a dungeon below the home of her abusive captor. Kampusch only secured her own freedom by escaping from her windowless cell in August 2006, after which her kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil committed suicide.
It also recalled the case of Elisabeth Frizl…
And so Jaycee Duggard is placed in context. But there is no context. She is her own person. This is her story. To throw in other names without thought, to make her experiences shared, only lessens her horrors and reduces the impact of what happened to her.
This is a story that needs no hype. It just needs telling…
Posted: 28th, August 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comments (6) | TrackBack | Permalink
