Jaycee Lee Dugard's stepfather suggested to a television reporter Friday that his daughter felt guilty for forming a bond with her captors of 18 years - an idea consistent with a side effect felt by kidnap victims.
Dugard's stepfather, Carl Probyn, mentioned this to reporters with ABC. "She feels really guilty for bonding with this man. There's really a guilt trip here," he told the television network.
The effect, called Stockholm syndrome, is a psychological condition in which hostages sympathize with their captors.
According to a number of articles by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the syndrome was first observed in Stockholm, Sweden in 1973, when robbers held four bank workers in a vault for more than five days. When police finally tried to rescue them, several resisted and later refused to testify at the robbers' trials.
The FBI also cited the example of Austrian Natascha Kampusch, who was held captive for eight years, until 2006. She bonded with her abductor to such an extent that she blamed police for his suicide and went to his funeral.
The same 2007 FBI bulletin tried to explain why these effects are felt: "In cases where Stockholm syndrome has occurred, the captive is in a situation where the captor has stripped nearly all forms of independence and gained control of the victim's life, as well as basic needs for survival. Some experts say that the hostage regresses to, perhaps, a state of infancy; the captive must cry for food, remain silent, and exist in an extreme state of dependence.
"In contrast, the perpetrator serves as a mother figure protecting her child from a threatening outside world, including law enforcement's deadly weapons. The victim then begins a struggle for survival, both relying on and identifying with the captor. Possibly, hostages' motivation to live outweighs their impulse to hate the person who created their dilemma."
According to the FBI's Hostage Barricade Database System, which contains data on more than 4,700 hostage incidents, 73 percent of captives show no evidence of Stockholm syndrome.