News & Tech

In Touch Weekly goes outside its celebrity coverage a bit this week for the cover story, they dabble into how Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard are coping. Both girls were snatched as young women and survived! How did it happen and how much hope can that give parents that have missing kids?

Elizabeth Smart & Jaycee Dugard - How They Are Coping

The feature notes that Elizabeth Smart was just a girl when accused kidnapper Brian David Mitchell snatched her out of her bed and held her captive for nine months. But as she stood in front of a Utah courtroom, detailing the atrocities she says she was forced to suffer at the hands of this “evil, wicked, manipulative” man, Elizabeth showed Mitchell — and the world — what a brave young woman she’s become.


The magazine adds, "Just like Elizabeth, Jaycee Dugard is preparing to confront the man accused of stealing her childhood. It’s been seven weeks since Jaycee’s 18-year-long nightmare finally came to an end. And as her family and friends reveal, she is still adjusting. After being held prisoner by accused psychopath Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy, for more than half of her life, Jaycee, now 29, is getting used to life outside her harrowing backyard dungeon one day at a time."

“She’s with her mom and sister. She’s getting readjusted,” her stepfather, Carl Probyn, tells In Touch, adding that Jaycee is working with a “team of counselors” in order to get over the horrors she suffered at the hands of the religious zealot and his wife.

Then magazine has more here and will have a full feature story on newsstands today about the two young women.