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Maryk children face hurdles in return to life with their mother

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 05/28/2012 12:17 PM

Christy Dzikowicz, director of missing children services for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection appeared live at the Free Press News Café. (TYLER WALSH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

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The biggest hurdle Dominic and Abby Maryk now face is leaving the emotional trauma of being held captive behind them, judging by comments in other famous kidnapping cases.

So while it’s too early to say what the future holds for the Maryks, now safely back in Winnipeg, commentary and experiences faced by former kidnap victims like Jaycee Lee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart may offer some insight.

As part of the team that flew to Mexico over the weekend to bring the children home, Christy Dzikowicz, for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has suggested that it’s true that the Maryks won’t just step into a life of happily-ever-after now they’re back on Canadian soil.

Dzikowicz said today the children were confined for years without communication with the outside world, likely never attending school or receiving medical attention. It will take time and counseling for the kids to readjust to normal life in Winnipeg.

Normal is word with a loaded meaning in this context, according to comments in at least one other case of captivity.

Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in South Lake Tahoe. She gave birth to two daughters while held hostage and likely lived with the near constant threat of fear and abuse for the 18 years she was confined, according to an account in the San Francisco Chronicle in the days after Dugard was freed in 2009.

One expert said of Dugard that she might never learn to live a normal life after what she’d lived through.

"Someone asked me if I think she'll ever have a normal life. I'm not sure 'normal' is the word," said Paula Fass, a history professor at UC Berkeley and author of the book Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America said in an interview with the Chronicle after Dugard was freed in 2009.

"But let's hope she can still live decently and reconnect with that earlier life. The challenge will be to try to integrate these two parts of her life - before she was taken, and her children now - in a way that can be meaningful," the UC Berkeley expert said.

If a key indicator of recovery is the ability of a child to hold on to memories of life before kidnapping, then a comment that already been made about the Maryks children suggests the pair have already jumped a major hurdle in their journey: Winnipeg’s Dzikowicz described the children as "really quite resilient" and doing "very very well."

"They absolutely, 100 per cent recognized their mother, have many memories," she said. "Dominic’s looking forward to (a) Slurpee."

Those memories could be the key to unlock their door to recovery, judging by the UC Berkley expert in the Dugard case.

Perhaps, too, the story of Elizabeth Smart - the American girl kidnapped at age 14 from her Salt Lake Utah home in 2005 and held captive for nine months - offers some inspiration. An account of her ordeal was turned into a made for TV movie that was widely broadcast. Smart married in 2012 and she’s successfully carved out a career as an activist and television commentator.

Watch a replay of the interview below:

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