Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping and the probation department debacle that followed were the subject of a hearing at the State Capitol Wednesday.
The forum was sponsored by Sen. Ted Gaines of Roseville and El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson.
Dugard was held her for 18 years by the Garridos who have plead guilty to the crime of rape and kidnapping. Phillip Garrido fathered two children with Dugard.
Gaines said as a father of six children, he is concerned that such an incident might happen again.
"Our children are in peril," Gaines said in his opening statement..
Pierson is the current D.A. in the county where Dugard was kidnapped in 1991 near Lake Tahoe. He pointed out mistakes made by authorities before and after the little girl was taken. Pierson identified the biggest mistake as the decision to release Phillip Garrido from prison in 1988, despite a history of violent attacks. He said authorities relied too much on the evaluation of psychiatric professionals who determined Garrido had been rehabilitated.
The hearing comes one day after Pierson's office released disturbing new video that shows both Phillip and Nancy Garrido luring young girls two years after she and her husban Phillip kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard.
The District Attorney's office posted the videos to its web site -- click here to watch them. Pierson also released a 24-page report outlining what went wrong.Click here to see the full report link (pdf).
Pierson repeated Wednesday what he said on Tuesday, that "law enforcement failed to see Phillip Garrido for what and who he truly is ... evil."
Local
In the video, shot in 1993, the voice of Garrido's wife Nancy and a girl can be heard. Nancy Garrido asks the girl to do the splits while she videotapes it.
"That's it. Can you go all the way down?" Nancy says to the girl. The girl says she can go down farther.
"Let me see, I bet you can go down really easy," Nancy Garrido said.
When the girl notices a light on the camera, she asks Nancy Garrido about it.
"I don't know anything about that camera," says Nancy, quickly changing the subject.
In a separate interrogation video, Nancy Garrido told a detective she made 10 to 20 of these videos for her husband.
Garrido was sentenced to 431 years to life in prison after pleading guilty. Nancy Garrido was sentenced to 36 years to life.
Dugard was reunited with her family in August 2009 after her whereabouts were discovered during a meeting with a parole agent who had summoned Phillip Garrido to his office.
The meeting came after two University of California, Berkeley police employees grew suspicious when Garrido showed up at the campus with the two girls he fathered with Dugard and asked for a permit to hold a religious event.
Also on Wednesday, Gaines said he will introduce legislation intended to circumvent a 2008 California Supreme Court decision.
The court ruled the state parole board cannot base its decision denying a prisoner's release solely on the nature of the original crime.
Considering a variety of other factors could make it easier for prisoners to win release.
Since the ruling, Gaines says the board has granted parole to more than 1,300 inmates serving life terms.
Supporters of his proposal said the ruling means that even Dugard's kidnapper, Phillip Garrido, could be deemed unlikely to commit new crimes. Dugard was held for 18 years by Garrido, then a
paroled sex offender.
