Jaycee Dugard Speaks On Life After & During Her Kidnapping With Diane Sawyer

Jaycee Dugard sat down for an exclusive interview with 20/20 host Diane Sawyer, which aired on Friday night — as she opened up about her life after and during captivity.

Jaycee Dugard Talks About Her Life Of Captivity With Diane Sawyer

Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped by Phillip and Nancy Garrido in 1991 near her Lake Tahoe, California, home. She was held captive in the couple’s backyard and raped repeatedly for 18 years.

Dugard gave birth to two daughters, fathered by Phillip, while she was their prisoner — before she and her daughters were rescued in 2009.

Phillip pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and 13 counts of sexual assault and was sentenced to 431 years in prison — while Nancy pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping, and was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison.

“I feel like l lived a lot of lifetimes,” Dugard told Sawyer. “It’s taken a lot of time and it hasn’t come overnight.”

“You have to put in the hard work and cry and, for sure, laugh about everything that you can,” Dugard added.

Dugard admitted that though she has moved on with her life, that backyard will always stick with her.

“There’s no denying it. I don’t want to deny it … what it was like being in the backyard,” Dugard revealed. “It was so much a part of my life. … It’s always there, in the back of my mind. It never really goes away.”

Dugard, who is now 36, explained that she doesn’t worry about age when she looks at herself in the mirror. She laughed about how she’s just living out her teen years at the moment “to try to figure out … who I am.”

Dugard first told the account of her captivity in her 2011 bestselling book, A Stolen Life: A Memoir.

Dugard’s second novel titled Freedom: My Book of Firsts, is about moving on after those years in captivity, and is due out July 12.