Jaycee Lee Dugard describes how she survived Garrido torture
(CBS/AP) SAN FRANCISCO - In her first television interview, an emotional Jaycee Lee Dugard talked about why she was speaking out about the pain and determination she felt as she was held captive for nearly two decades by convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido.
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"Why not look at it? You know, stare it down until it can't scare you anymore," she told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "I didn't want there to be any more secrets...I hadn't done anything wrong. It wasn't something I did that caused this to happen. And I feel that by putting it all out there, it's very freeing."
Dugard was clear and composed throughout her interview on Sawyer's show "Primetime" that aired Sunday night, but grew emotional when she talked about seeing the first of two girls fathered by Phillip Garrido.
When Sawyer asked how old she was at the time of the birth in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Antioch she said "14."
"It was very painful," said Dugard as tears welled in her eyes. "She came out and then I saw her. She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn't alone anymore. I had somebody who was mine."
Dugard appeared younger than her 31 years as she talked to Sawyer on a couch and on a porch at her California home. The blond hair she had in now-familiar photographs from her childhood is now reddish-brown, and she wore a red sweater and a necklace with a pinecone charm on it, representing the last thing she touched before her 18-year captivity.
"It's a symbol of hope and new beginnings and that there is life after something tragic," Dugard said about her necklace.
The interview came on the eve of Dugard's memoir about her time in captivity, "A Stolen Life," which will be released Tuesday.