A US woman, kidnapped as a child and held for 18 years, bonded¹ with her alleged² captor and helped to run his printing firm, according to reports.

报道称，孩童时期被绑架并且被拘禁18年的美国妇女，帮助运营其绑架嫌疑人的印刷公司。

Jaycee Lee Dugard reportedly bonded with her alleged captor

Customers knew Jaycee Lee Dugard as Allissa and believed her to be kidnap suspect Phillip Garrido's daughter, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Police in California are searching the property where Ms Dugard was held, and a neighbouring house.

Mr Garrido and his wife Nancy deny 29 charges in connection with the case.

They are accused of abducting³ Ms Dugard when she was 11 years old from near her home in South Lake Tahoe, 200 miles (320km) away from Antioch, where they lived.

'Little family'

It is believed Mr Garrido fathered Ms Dugard's two children, the first when she was just 14.

"It was almost like a little family," said Ms Dugard's step-father, Carl Probyn, in a TV interview.

"That's probably what kept her alive - the fact that they all bonded."

Ms Dugard regularly interacted with clients of Mr Garrido's printing company, and was responsible for the graphic⁴ design side of the business, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted customers as saying.

"[Mr Garrido] told us up-front he works with his daughter. He said Allissa did all of the graphic design and he did all of the printing," said JP Miller⁵, who hired the firm to print advertising⁶ for his haulage（运输，运费） company.

"She was very professional, very polite, just like any other secretary or anyone you'd meet at a place of business," said Ben Daughdrill, another customer.

Ms Dugard and the children are believed to have been living in tents and sheds in the backyard of the Garridos' Antioch home for 18 years.

Her identity was rediscovered last week, after Mr Garrido was ordered to a parole meeting by police officers whose suspicions had been aroused by the behaviour of two girls with him.

The Contra Costa County sheriff's office spokesman, Jimmy Lee, said the house next door to Mr Garrido's property was also being treated as a crime scene.

He said Mr Garrido had access to the property before the current occupant moved in in 2006.

He said dogs were being used to search the properties, including those trained to look for bodies.

However, he said it was too early to say if there were any links to other "open cases".

Media have said police have been searching for clues to a number of prostitute murders in the 1990s. Several bodies in the unsolved murders were dumped near an industrial park where Mr Garrido worked.

Mr and Mrs Garrido are being held without bail⁷ and a further court hearing has been scheduled for 14 September.