Jaycee Dugard kept a journal during her years in captivity in which she depicted her isolation, darkest fears and her longing to be free from her alleged kidnappers, prosecutors revealed Thursday.

"Why don't I have control of my life! I feel I can't even be sure my thoughts are my own," Dugard, now 29, wrote in 2004, five years before authorities discovered she had been living in a backyard compound outside Antioch for years after being snatched off a South Lake Tahoe street in 1991, allegedly by Phillip Craig Garrido and his wife, Nancy.

District Attorney Vern Pierson of El Dorado County, where the Garridos have pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and rape, used the diary entries in arguing against a defense motion to learn where Dugard is living so Phillip Garrido's attorney may contact her.

That motion, prosecutors contended, is part of a plan Garrido allegedly hatched long before his arrest to maintain control over Dugard should he ever be caught.

A $200 kitten

The couple sought to manipulate Dugard and gain her trust from the start, prosecutors said.

She came to refer to them as "Phil and Nancy," Pierson said. He cited a journal entry from July 1993 when Dugard, then 13, wrote, "They did something no one else would do for me, they paid 200 dollars just so I could have my own kitten."

Around that time, Dugard became pregnant with the first of two daughters she would have by Garrido, prosecutors say.

Ten years later, in September 2003, Dugard wrote of her longing for freedom and her fear of emotionally hurting Phillip Garrido.

"I don't want to hurt him, sometimes I think my very presence hurts him," she wrote, according to prosecutors' motion. "So how can I ever tell him how I want to be free. Free to come and go as I please.

"Free to say I have a family," she continued. "I will never cause him pain if it's in my power to prevent it. FREE."

'Like I'm sinking'

On July 5, 2004, Dugard wrote further about her inner crisis and loss of identity.

"It feels like I'm sinking," she wrote. "I'm afraid I want control of my life ... This is supposed to be my life to do with what I like ... But once again he has taken it away.

"How many times is he allowed to take it from me? I am afraid he doesn't see how the things he says makes me a prisoner ... Why don't I have control of my life! I feel I can't even be sure my thoughts are my own."

The prosecutors' court filing also describes the elaborate "cover story" they say the Garridos developed to conceal Dugard and the two daughters from outsiders.

The three were instructed to run to the "hidden backyard if anyone ever came to the door," prosecutors wrote. Dugard was to "tell people that the girls were hers and that she was OK with them being around Phillip Garrido."

Post-arrest plan

Garrido emphasized that if he were ever arrested, Dugard was to request an attorney "so that his attorney and her attorney could communicate without law enforcement knowledge," prosecutors wrote.

That element of the plan, prosecutors say, is being played out in the recent defense motion to allow the Garridos to talk to one another and to learn Dugard's whereabouts.

The defense motion described the relationship between the Garridos and Dugard and her children as being similar to a family, where the children were home-schooled, had pets and a garden, took vacations and went to the library.

Pierson said Phillip Garrido is a "master manipulator" and the defense is "aggressively attempting to contact" Dugard, despite her emphatic desire to not have any such contact.

The prosecutor wrote in a sworn declaration that he spoke to Dugard on Monday and told her Garrido had said he does not "harbor any ill will" toward her or the girls and "loves them very much."

Effort to manipulate?

Dugard took the message as another effort to manipulate her, Pierson wrote. "I'm not following the plan," she told the prosecutor, according to his declaration.

Phillip Garrido's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Susan Gellman, wrote in an e-mail that contacting witnesses is a routine part of her job and necessary for building a defense.

"For the district attorney to hint that it is somehow improper or nefarious is disingenuous, to say the least," Gellman wrote. "I am not the 'tool' of any man, as has been intimated in today's filing."