How political correctness protected 'Creepy Phil'

It's a nightmare that shoots fear through the heart of every parent. Your child is abducted, and you never hear from her or about her again.

In 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop near her South Lake Tahoe home. Last week, 29-year-old "Allissa" admitted she was Jaycee and had been imprisoned for 18 years as a sex slave by "Creepy Phil" (neighbor's words) Garrido in sheds and tents concealed in his backyard in Antioch, Calif., some 170 miles away.

She bore him two daughters, the first when she was 14. According to the El Dorado County Sheriff's office, neither Jaycee nor either of the girls had ever been to a doctor, or to school.

Political correctness protected Creepy Phil, but ultimately did him in.

First, PC twisted the investigation of Jaycee's kidnapping.

For all these years, law enforcement has been fixated on their prime suspect in Jaycee's abduction: her stepfather, Carl Probyn. His life was made a living hell of investigation followed by more investigation by one agency and then another. His grief-stricken wife divorced him.

There was not in 1991 nor to this day any evidence that Carl had been involved in Jaycee's kidnapping. The police operated from the feminist template that pointed the finger of accusation at the father whenever anything happens to a young female child. PC pointed to the suspect, and no lack of evidence deterred "investigators." Carl told ABC news that he had been a suspect right up to the moment Creepy Phil confessed.

Jaycee's mother, Terry Probyn, was reunited last week with Jaycee. Carl Probyn was not invited to the reunion.

Next, PC shielded Creepy Phil during probation checks.

Garrido has a long rap sheet stretching back to 1971. He was convicted in 1976 of kidnapping a 25-year-old woman in South Lake Tahoe. He kept her in a mini warehouse in Reno, repeatedly raping her.

He was sentenced to 50 years to life in 1977, but was released in 1988, to federal parole, and then in 1999 transferred to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. As a convicted sex offender, the conditions of his probation included wearing a GPS locator on his ankle and submitting to supervised probation (including surprise visits to his home).

The caseload of Phil's parole officer was reduced to allow more time for meeting and home visits with him. Published reports indicate that officers visited Phil "two or three times per month." Despite repeated surprise visits to Creepy Phil's home by his probation officer(s) over the years, nobody ever noticed the presence of Jaycee or her two daughters

Neighbors told reporters that they frequently heard children playing in Phil's backyard, but the yard was carefully concealed by trees, bushes and fencing. Last week, local papers published aerial photos showing the tents and sheds where Jaycee and her daughters lived.

In 2006, a 9-1-1 call from a neighbor resulted in a law enforcement check of the premises that missed the backyard. Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf apologized last week, acknowledging that his officers "should have been more ... curious and turned over a rock or two" – or looked through the backyard.

In 2008, a special "task force" of local law enforcement agencies focused on sex offenders and visited Phil. They never looked in the backyard either.

PC dictates that sex offenders can be "rehabilitated." It's not true. Numerous studies come to the opposite conclusion. In California, PC dictates that paroled sex offenders have "privacy rights." My own San Diego County Sheriff opposed "Megan's Law" disclosure of the location of sex offenders in the neighborhoods because that would "violate their right to privacy."

Creepy Phil was shielded from any real scrutiny during almost 10 years of "supervised" California state probation. In the nightmare that is the PC world, "supervised" means "hear no evil, see no evil."

But then Creepy Phil made a PC mistake: He got religion.

In April, 2008, Phil started his own church, registering "God's Desire" as a California corporation using his home address. He told people he was thinking of leaving his printing business and preaching full time. He sometimes broke out in religious songs he had written, and claimed God spoke to him through a small box he carried around. He began writing a blog of his religious beliefs.

Last Tuesday, Phil and Jaycee's two girls tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley campus, to hand out religious literature. They were immediately apprehended by campus police. At the campus where the "free-speech" movement began in the 60s, religious speech is not tolerated.

A background check by the campus cops determined that Phil was a sex offender, and they called his probation officer. The probation officer ordered Phil to appear with the girls for a meeting the next day.

Jaycee came to the meeting, stating she was "Alissa," Phil's wife. Under questioning, Phil admitted he had abducted "Alissa" and that she was Jaycee Dugard.

The media seem perplexed by this story. How could Creepy Phil hide Jaycee in plain sight all these years? Political correctness, backed up by the state legislature, enforced by law enforcement templates and probation biases explains a lot of what went on here. To date, no report or analysis has even mentioned this angle to the story.

I'll bet no one in the media will ever acknowledge the role of political correctness in the sad saga of Jaycee Dugard and Creepy Phil.