Phillip Garrido 'not guilty' plea: Jaycee Dugard and family try to live a normal life
To any passerby, they are just like anyone else, a family of girls out shopping together, just as families do.
But it is much, much more than that. It is a family who are trying to be normal, trying to adjust, trying to heal.
Recent photos of Jaycee Dugard, her two daughters and her mother strolling down the street paint a poignant picture of lives slowly being rebuilt.
Hope: Jaycee Dugard, her children Angel and Starlit and her mother Terry Probyn attempt to get on with their lives and put their horrific past behind them
Simple pleasures: Jaycee rides her pink bike in her neighbourhood, something she was unable to do for 18 years of her life while she was in captivity
Though the recent surprising actions of her alleged kidnapper and his wife may bring their precious sense of reality crashing down.
For convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido, the man who has been charged with the kidnapping and rape of Jaycee, holding her captive and in squalor in his backyard for 18 years, has decided to plead not guilty.
In a bizarre turn of events, Garrido's lawyer issued the plea at a court hearing in Pacerville, California, yesterday after it was previously revealed he would plead guilty.
Not guilty: In a surprising turn of events, Garrido and his wife Nancy have plead not guilty, despite issuing full confessions to the crime last year
This means that Jaycee, now 31, may have to face he and his wife Nancy in court and recount the horror of what she allegedly suffered at his hands for 18 years of her life.
Garrido and his wife had given full confessions to authorities and expressed interest in plea bargains that would spare Jaycee and her daughters Angel and Starlit - now 13 and 16 - from having to testify.
Jaycee did an interview with People magazine to tell how she was recovering and coping in the real world
But Nancy Garrido's attorney advised her against pleading guilty unless prosecutors offer a deal that holds the possibility - however remote - that she would one day be freed from prison.
As Nancy Garrido seeks the prospect of freedom in the future, that possibility of being free from her 18-year ordeal may never come for Jaycee if she has to testify in court.
The news will come as another blow to the Dugard family, who have remained fiercely private since their reunion in August 2009.
In another picture of Jaycee, the mother-of-two rides a pink bike, pink having always been her favourite colour.
She wears the clothes of any normal young woman but looks almost child-like in her face and her innocence, despite being 30 years old at the time.
It is a pleasure that she was never allowed after that day on June 10, 1991, when she was abducted from her school bus stop right in front of her stepfather's eyes.
For the next 18 years she would not be allowed many pleasures but instead subjected to repeated rapings, resulting in the bearing of her children.
Jaycee's mother said in an interview that she wanted to share her miracle with the world but it had to be on their terms.
'As a mother I am pleading for our privacy in this very public story,' she said.
At the time of the abduction, Jaycee was in fifth grade attending Meyers Elementary School near South Lake Tahoe.
Then she disappeared off the face of the earth.
She has since tried to lead an 'ordinary life' and has obtained a high school diplomacy and wants to go to college.
She already has her driver's license and has obtained birth certificates for her children.
Together they enjoy cooking and horse riding, which is used as part of their therapy and their on-going healing process.
Before and after: Jaycee's face become one of the most well-known in America after she disappeared but now she wants to be free to live her life away from the spotlight, which she will not be able to do if she has to face her captor in court
But with Garrido pleading not guilty she will have to relive the nightmare he allegedly subjected her to for years.
Last year Jaycee broke the news to her daughters about what their father really did, as they were upset that he was in prison.
A team of psychologists have been helping the family rebuild their lives.
Extracts of a journal Jaycee kept, released by the prosecution to show the mind control Garrido had over his alleged victim, revealed a girl yearning for freedom.
In 2003 she wrote: 'How can I ever tell him I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please ... free to say I have a family.'
In another entry in 2004 she wrote: 'It feels like I'm sinking. ... This is supposed to be my life to do with what I like ... but once again he has taken it away.
'How many times is he allowed to take it away from me? I am afraid he doesn't see how the things he says makes me a prisoner.'
She is now penning a memoir, due for release later this year.
Jaycee gave birth to her daughters when she was 14 and 17, almost the age her daughters are now.
She has been trying to give her children as normal a life as possible, away from their father and his wife and the bizarre life that they led.
It is hoped the couple will never see the light of day again if convicted of the crimes.
If convicted on all counts, the maximum sentence for Nancy Garrido would be 181 years, while Phillip Garrido could get 431 years, according to El Dorado County Deputy District Attorney James Clinchard.
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