San Francisco  - For eighteen years she was gone - an eleven-year-old girl snatched from the pavement into a grey Ford and never seen again.

As details of Jaycee Dugard's ordeal emerged Thursday and Friday, her relatives were overwhelmed with joy at finding her alive. But they were also filled with horror at how she had been forced to live for almost two decades: locked away as a sex slave in a secret compound by a convicted rapist and forced to bear him two children, the first one coming when she was just 14 years old.

"I never expected this," her stepfather Carl Probyn, 60, told NBC News Friday. Probyn was with Jaycee when she was snatched in broad daylight in June 1991. He had tried to chase down the kidnapper's car on his mountain bike, and was long regarded as the prime suspect by law enforcement officers.

But even as he conducted interview after interview with US media outlets, Probyn's craggy features rarely broke into a smile and he seemed overwhelmed by a complex variety of emotions.

"This is an absolute miracle, to get her back, and get her back alive," he said. "And she's fairly healthy. My wife says he looks like almost like she did when she was kidnapped."

Probyn, 60, said he had not spoken to his stepdaughter, but that his ex-wife said she was "feeling guilty for bonding" with the suspect, convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido,
58, who was charged with various kidnapping and sex charges.

Garrido kept Jaycee in isolation in a ramshackle warrant of sheds, tents and tarpaulins in the backyard of his suburban California home some 80 kilometres northeast of San Francisco. Authorities said that neither Jaycee or her two daughters were allowed to go to school, see a doctor, watch television or listen to the radio.

Under such circumstances it's normal for victims to bond with their captors, former FBI profiler Cliff Van Zandt said. "No-one can understand the trauma this 11-year-old girl went through with her two daughters. They were really wrapped in a cocoon that did not expose them to the outside world," he said.

Yet there had been sightings of them over the years, prompting widespread criticism of why Garrido had not been arrested earlier. One neighbour told her husband she thought the young girls were being hidden in the outbuildings - but was told to mind her business. Another neighbour even reported suspicious activity to the sheriff, who declined to search the property because he had no warrant. Most galling was that even when a sex-offender task force did search the compound, they never discovered the secret prisoners.

The ordeal only ended when for some reason Garrido took the two young girls with him to the University of California, Berkeley on Tuesday to hand out religious literature. A campus policeman said his suspicions were aroused when the girls couldn't look him in the eye. A background check revealed Garrido's prior conviction for rape and he was called in to see his parole officer.

Garrido arrived at the meeting Wednesday with his three captives. Authorities quickly confirmed their identity, and contacted their shocked family. After 18 years the nightmare was over, but the challenge of rebuilding their lives was just starting.

"How do you get 18 years back?" Probyn asked."I just hope that she can have a decent life from here on out. Her life kind of stopped at 11."  (dpa)