Wesson family taking back control

Published online on Wednesday, Sep. 16, 2009

The day Phillip Garrido was arrested, the first thing Gypsy Wesson thought of was "our story."

Five years ago, the Wesson murders sickened the world: nine people killed, eight of them children, all of the deaths orchestrated by their father, Marcus Wesson, in a small Fresno home.

Garrido is accused of kidnapping an 11-year-old girl, holding her for 18 years in backyard sheds and tents, and fathering two children with her. In the time since Jaycee Dugard has been freed, some people have asked why she didn't flee her captor.

Gypsy Wesson -- who did escape her father's control at 19 -- and her siblings have been asked similar questions many times.

"It comes from people who are very ignorant," said Wesson, 25, speaking on my radio show Tuesday along with two of her brothers. "They don't understand that we were children. That we were raised away from society. We didn't go to school. Not an ounce of education. We didn't know right from wrong because we had no way of knowing.

"[Garrido] took a child that was real young, made her believe she couldn't run away and believe that he was all she had. We lived the same way. Why didn't she run away? It's not that easy. All you have is the streets.

"I never considered going to the authorities because he always said that if the authorities come, we'd all die. I'd be handing out a death sentence to my whole family."

Garrido -- as did Marcus Wesson -- deflected attention from law enforcement by being polite when confronted by officers.

"A few times he got pulled over for a traffic violation, he would become very soft-spoken and seem harmless," says Dorian Wesson, 34, of his father. "He could make officers overlook anything suspicious. I've always wondered why officers didn't recognize how peculiar our family was."

A new book, "Where Hope Begins," written by KMPH (Channel 26.1) reporter Alysia Sofios, draws a sharp picture of how Marcus Wesson manipulated, sexually assaulted and beat his family. Some of the family, previously silent, now are talking publicly about their upbringing and attempts to recover from his domination and the murders.

For Dorian and Adrian Wesson, 33, a good day was not getting beaten.

"I had an extreme fear of my father," Dorian says. "He was very intimidating -- 400 pounds. My goal was just to make him happy and stay out of his way. That's how I dealt with it.

"The concept of moving out into a house? I didn't have the courage to do it. That was impossible. I was caught up in his web. I never hated him. But I always was disappointed and hoping that he was a normal father."

Says Adrian: "He would always physically beat the crap out of me. Him, being the father, I would subconsciously submit, that's what you naturally do, and he took advantage of that."

After Dorian and Adrian got jobs working at a McDonald's in Santa Cruz, they lived on the streets during the week and returned to the family tent in the mountains on weekends. But Marcus, fearing their budding independence, abandoned them. One Saturday morning, they showed up at the tent and found everyone gone.

"He kept us all separate so that we couldn't form a bond," Gypsy says. "I have brothers -- I don't know their life stories. We were all kept in our own separate isolated worlds. That's why no one ever ran away."

This complete domination explains why -- during the trial resulting in Marcus Wesson's conviction and death sentence -- some family members supported him during court testimony.

"Our fears did not end the day he went behind bars," Gypsy says. "He was still very much in control. I was afraid that he would do something to me, and this was a very relevant fear for everyone in the family. He told everyone he was going to be acquitted."

Five years later?

"Everyone," Gypsy says, "realizes what he is."

And the Wessons soldier on.

"Sometimes, I've felt ashamed of my last name," Dorian says. "But I realize that the things that happened were not my fault. I'm going to show that you can recover from something like this."