Jaycee tells of horror years as rapist's captive

Jaycee Dugard, the American girl kidnapped and held captive for 18 years, has revealed her torment at the hands of the rapist who stole her life.

Miss Dugard - who was dragged from a bus stop in front of her stepfather in South Lake Tahoe, California - has written a heartbreaking book about her years locked in a soundproofed shed.

Now 31, she was imprisoned and raped repeatedly by drug addict Philip Garrido, 60, and bore him two daughters aged 13 and 17. Her disappearance in June 1991 triggered headlines across the world but she was not found until Garrido released her from his home in Antioch, California, in August 2009.

Today, her memoir A Stolen Life was released to the media. It will go on sale this week. Advance copies on the US Amazon website have sold out. It begins: "I was kidnapped by a stranger aged 11 and I want people to know that I no longer have to keep his secret."

In an interview on ABC, Miss Dugard described Garrido pulling up in his car: "I thought, 'Oh somebody is looking for directions.' And then his hand shoots out and my whole body feels numb. I fall back in the bushes." The crystal-meth addict had shot her with a stun gun. She said: "I lost control of my bladder.

"I came to and heard the driver saying, 'I can't believe we got away with it.'" Garrido was talking to wife Nancy Bocanegro, 55. In April, they admitted kidnap and sexual assault and were jailed for a total of 467 years.

In a harrowing section of the book she tells of the first time Garrido abused her and how afterwards he tried to "comfort" her: "I do not want comfort from this awful man... I feel like a rabbit being comforted by a lion. I am so scared."

She describes giving birth in the shed aged 14. The cord was around the baby's neck and Garrido intervened to move it. Jaycee says she wears a pine cone around her neck - the last thing she touched before Garrido snatched her.