Parents Hope for Kidnapped Daughter's Return
Feb. 9, 2006 — -- It's been a month since Mary Beth and Jim Carroll received a phone call from the U.S. State Department they say they have yet to digest.
They were told that on Jan. 7, their daughter, Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for the Christian Science Monitor, had been kidnapped in Iraq.
"We had always feared this when Jill was in Iraq," Mary Beth Carroll said. "We knew that this was a possibility, and it's always the worst case. And that nightmare came true."
Carroll's parents said the last time they spoke with their daughter was on New Year's Eve.
"It was [a] terrible connection because there's gunfire everywhere," Mary Beth Carroll said. "And all I could hear was that she was in a hotel, and I thought she was calling me to tell me she was going to die. But it was the Iraqis -- they celebrate the New Year with gunfire. … But we did have that sort of rehearsal for what was to happen a week later."
Carroll was shown in a video on Jan. 30, wearing an Islamic veil and weeping. Her parents believe, however, that her strength will carry her through.
"For now, we have a very important -- our most important -- goal in our life now is to get her back," Jim Carroll said.
Her parents are getting support from all over the world, much of it from inside Iraq where they say Jill made friends.
"We've even had support from a powerful sheik who did not have reason to like Americans," Jim Carroll said, "but who is a very strong man, and a considerate man who is helping us to retrieve our daughter."
The Carrolls are proud of their daughter -- and what they've long called her independent streak. They first witnessed it when she was a young girl.
"She was about 5 or 6 years old, and Jim and I were sitting in the living room, and she walked down the stairs with a suitcase, and we said: 'Jill, where are you going?'" Mary Beth Carroll said.
The girl walked out the door, but it was not long before she came back. The Carrolls are holding out the same hope now.
Related Stories
ABC News Live