San Francisco  - A lawyer for the wife of the man charged with kidnapping a young girl and holding her captive for 18 years, said Wednesday that she was also a victim of his controlling nature.

"I guess I would say she's a victim," Gilbert Maines, the court- appointed attorney for Nancy Garrido, 58, said on Good Morning America.

Nancy Garrido was charged Friday along with her husband Phillip Garrido with 29 charges of kidnapping, rape and conspiracy stemming from the abduction of Jaycee Dugard in June 1991. Police allege the couple kept Dugard in a ramshackle tent compound in their backyard, and that Garrido fathered two daughters with her, Angel and Starlet, now aged 11 and 15.

Maines said he does not yet have enough information to formulate a defence. But he suggested that Nancy Garrido was powerless to free Dugard even when her husband served five months in jail in 1993 for a parole violation.

"If she's being controlled, he doesn't have to be there physically. If she's being controlled, she's being controlled," he said.

Maines also said that his client was in an emotional state because of the separation from the girls.

"She was distraught. She was frightened. She seemed a little lost, all of those things. She seemed to be like a ship without a rudder, but she understood why she was there," Maines said. "They acted like a family. She misses the girls very much. She loves them."  dpa