Kidnapped for 10 years, chained, raped and half starved: Cleveland kidnapping victims speak to Kirsty Wark BBC
Remember them?
Heres their story:
Michelle Knight took a deep breath. Staring straight ahead, mustering every ounce
of steel her petite frame could manage, she spoke clearly to the court. “After 11
years I am finally being heard, and it’s liberating,” she said.
“Writing this statement
gave me the strength to be a stronger woman and to know that there is more good than evil.”
Given the life that Michelle has been forced to lead, her assertion that there is more
good than evil is almost impossible to comprehend. Eleven years ago, when she
was 21, she was snatched from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, by former bus driver
Ariel Castro. Chained and starved, beaten and raped, she miscarried his child five
times after he punched and kicked her in the stomach. She was joined in her
captivity by two women: Amanda Berry, kidnapped aged 16, and Gina DeJesus,
then 14. All three endured unimaginable horrors; kept in darkness, attacked and – in
Amanda’s case – bearing Castro’s daughter, Jocelyn, now six.
Amanda and Gina could not bear to be in the courtroom. But Michelle – the one
who spent the longest in captivity and with no loving family to fall back on – was
insistent that her voice be heard.
“My name is Michelle Knight,” she told the court. Speaking at first in a soft, girlish
voice, she quavered at the mention of the two-year-old son she had left behind
when she was abducted: “I look inside my heart and I see my son and I cried every
night. Christmas was a most traumatic day because I could not spend it with my
son.”
Behind her in the courtroom sat Castro, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his legs
manacled. His face was impassive, but his eyes darted across the room as her
voice hardened. “Ariel Castro, I remember all the times you came home and talked
about other things and said, 'At least I didn’t kill you’,” she said bitterly. “You took
11 years of my life away and I have got it back. I spent 11 years in hell and now
your hell is just beginning.” The death penalty, she said, would be too easy an
escape for him.
On Friday morning, Michelle Knight visited the white clapboard house where she
had been held captive – and which is due to be demolished – and thanked the
neighbours who had supported her. She didn’t go inside. Just standing outside, as
a free woman, was enough. She also expressed her gratitude to the Cleveland
police in a handwritten note, thanking them for “their time and work” and spelling
out her resilience: “Life is tough, but I’m tougher.”
She added: “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became the
butterfly.”
Castro, 53, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison, plus 1,000 years, with no
opportunity for parole. He had pleaded guilty to 937 charges, including aggravated
murder, rape and kidnapping.
“There is no place in this city, there is no place in this country, there is no place in
this world for those who enslave others,” said Judge Michael Russo, sentencing
Castro.
For Michelle, who has undisclosed learning difficulties, the ordeal was a horrific
chapter in an already troubled life.
Estranged from her family, she had no
triumphant homecoming, with balloons around the door, like Amanda. She had no
sister to welcome her into her home with a tight embrace, like Gina did.
On leaving hospital after she was freed from Castro’s house, in May, the authorities
didn’t know where to take her – she had no home and barely any family.
Details of her early life are hard to piece together; Michelle has not spoken, other
than in court on Thursday, and the scattering of family members that have come
forward appear to have drifted in and out of contact with each other.
Because she was an adult when she went missing in 2002, the FBI had removed
her case from its missing-persons database after 15 months. They suspected she
had just wanted to melt away.
In the weeks running up to her kidnap, her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Joey, had
been taken away from her. He is said to have suffered an unspecified injury while in the care of her mother Barbara’s boyfriend.
Michelle was said to be furious at her mother, blaming her for the loss of her child. It was widely believed that the 21-
year-old simply decided to have nothing more to do with her, so many people in
Cleveland did not even know she was missing. Even her own family were in the
dark.
“I was freaking happy as hell, because I didn’t know my sister was kidnapped,”
said Freddie Knight, 30, who is estranged from the rest of the family. “My mother
never tells me anything.” He said that their mother kicked him out of the house
when he was 14 and Michelle was 16. And it was around this time that she began
having serious problems, too.
The family grew up in Cleveland, a rough-and-ready industrial centre of 400,000
people that is surrounded by gritty, crime-ridden neighbourhoods. It is one of
America’s 10 most dangerous cities. But Michelle, whose father is unknown,
seemed to have a pleasant enough early childhood. She helped her mother work in
her vegetable garden and loved to feed apples to the neighbour’s pony.
As a child, Mrs Knight told Cleveland’s local newspaper, The Plain Dealer, Michelle
became fascinated with the fire engines that passed the family home on their way to
emergencies, and so, after a tour of the local fire station, decided she wanted to
become a firefighter. Then later, helping her mother to deliver the family shih-tzu’s
litter of puppies, she decided that becoming a vet would be better.
Her later teens were less happy. She did not thrive at James Ford Rhodes High
School. The school suffered from poor facilities and overcrowding – an investigation
in 2011 found a catalogue of recurring problems, including classes of well over 50
students. Michelle, standing just 4ft 7in tall, was nicknamed “Shorty” and struggled
to fit in. Her mental condition meant she was often confused about her
surroundings, according to a missing-persons report filed in August 2002, when she disappeared.
Aged 17, Michelle was assaulted at school. Her mother claims the police did not
take her story seriously and, as a result, she dropped out of her classes, failing to
complete her education.
Her great-aunt Deborah tells an even more disturbing story. Michelle was set on by
three male classmates and gang-raped at the school. Her son Joey was the result of
that attack.
When Joey was born, Michelle tried to create a positive environment for her son.
She lived with her mother in Cleveland’s West 60th Street and dreamt of returning
to study so that she could earn a living to support her new baby.
But that simple dream was shattered by the arrival of David Feckley, her mother’s
boyfriend, who was convicted of child endangerment for breaking Joey’s arm. He
served eight years in prison.
Court documents show that on August 26 2002 – shortly after Michelle had
disappeared – Feckley was sentenced. The court had been told about the history of
domestic violence in the household, including prior abuse of the child, and about Feckley’s lack of remorse.
Leila Atassi, the reporter on The Plain Dealer who has covered the Cleveland
kidnappings story from the beginning, explained: “Barbara Knight said that among
her own greatest regrets was becoming involved with an abusive man, who, she
believes, injured her toddler grandson – spurring a chain of events that led Michelle
to lose custody of the child.”
Michelle vanished not long afterwards, on a day when she was scheduled for a
court appearance in the custody case. She was last seen at a cousin’s house, not
far from her own, in August 2002.
Michelle ended up less than three miles away, at the home of Ariel Castro – lured,
according to several reports, by the promise of a chance to see some recently born
puppies. Police now believe that she was raped and chained up almost
immediately, beginning her 11 years of torture.
A year later, Amanda Berry arrived,
followed in 2004 by Gina DeJesus.
The two rooms inside his house in which the women were kept seemed like the
unremarkable bedrooms of young women, with Disney posters tacked to the pink
walls and stuffed animals lined up on the bed. Yet a closer look reveals 99ft of
rusted iron chains that Castro used to imprison them with, and the heavy wooden
boards with which he blocked the windows.
He created a makeshift alarm system,
removed doorknobs and installed multiple locks to prevent escape.
Jannette Gomez, 50, who often visits family and friends on the street, said Castro
would park his motorcycle and red pick-up truck behind the house, lock the gate
and enter the house through a back door.
Occasionally, he would turn on a dim
porch light, but the house was always dark.
On the rare occasions over the decade that he took them out of the house, Castro
would disguise the women in motorcycle helmets and wigs. In 2005, he locked the
three women in a car in his garage to hide them from a house guest, and at other
points stuffed dirty socks in their mouths to stop them screaming.
Michelle Knight became pregnant five times during her imprisonment. And in court
on Thursday, a 13-page sentencing memorandum, largely drawn on diaries kept by
the three victims throughout their captivity, described how he tried to abort a baby
that Michelle was carrying by putting her on a diet of only tea and forcing her to
perform gruelling exercises each day. When that did not work, “the defendant
punched and kicked her in the stomach, jumped on her stomach, and starved her
for days to terminate the pregnancy,” the prosecutors said. He went on to keep the
placenta in the refrigerator “as a memento”.
The killing of the unborn child comprised only a small section of the prosecution’s
description of Castro’s “disgusting and inhuman conduct”. Furthermore, the woman
who had had her own child taken from her, and miscarried five times, was forced to
deliver Amanda Berry’s baby – in a paddling pool, on Christmas Day 2006.
Castro said that if the baby died, he would kill Michelle.
Michelle, then 25, is said to have told investigators that she frantically tried to
resuscitate the child after it stopped breathing, using her own mouth to “breathe for her” in order to keep them both alive.
Dr Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist who specialises in Stockholm syndrome, testified
at the sentencing. “I would start with Michelle,” he said. “What an extraordinary
human being. She served as doctor, nurse, paediatrician, midwife. She did the
delivery… under primitive circumstances. And when that little baby wasn’t
breathing, she breathed into that baby. She brought life to that child. And she also
had circumstances in which she interposed herself so that Gina wouldn’t get the
assault. And she took it. She is a very courageous and heroic individual.”
The three women were rescued when Amanda bolted for freedom and called the
police. Wild celebrations ensued for those who had maintained the vigils for
Amanda and Gina. But Michelle, it seemed, had been forgotten. Her mother claims
that she flyered the neighbourhood after the police gave up the hunt, but it would
appear to have had little impact. No one really knew she was missing.
Five days after the women were released, Cleveland’s residents staged a rally for
Michelle – the “forgotten victim”. More than 200 people took to the streets of the
West Side neighbourhood, many wearing red ribbons in a show of solidarity.
“We want her to see that we’re here and that the whole city of Cleveland loves her
and we’re here for her no matter what,” said Fawn Cassidy, 44.
“When she disappeared, at one point, she was forgotten. Nobody knew she was
gone. She just got lost in the shuffle,” added Toni Urban, 56.
Michelle was sadly aware, during her confinement, of being left to her fate. “I was
so alone,” she told the court on Thursday. “I worried about what would happen to
me and the girls every day. Years turn into eternity. I knew no one cared about me.
I knew my family don’t care.”
Barbara Knight, now 50, was not contacted by her daughter upon her release from
captivity on May 6. “I just wish that my daughter would reach out and let me know
that she’s there,” said Mrs Knight, days after hearing that she was alive. “She’s
probably angry at the world because she thought she would never be found but
thank God that somebody did.
“I don’t want her to think that I forgot about her. Hopefully, whatever happened
between us, if something did – I hope it heals because I really want to take her
back to Florida with me.”
It has been a hope in vain. Michelle has reportedly refused to see her mother,
ignoring letters and pleas to get in touch. Some reports suggested that Michelle may
even move in with Gina and her family.
According to her brother Freddie, since her release Michelle wants only to “get her
baby back”. Joey, now 13, is believed to be in foster care.
“It’s interesting that Michelle Knight was the only one who wanted to speak,” said
Anouchka Grose, a psychoanalyst based in London. “She didn’t have the family
support that the other two did, so perhaps making the statement to the court was a
reflection of this. She needed to be heard. And had to do it alone.”
How the three women will rebuild their lives remains to be seen. And certainly
Michelle does not have an easy road ahead of her. She told Castro on Thursday that
she “could forgive, but would never forget”.
But can you ever really forgive something that incomprehensibly horrific? “The
sentiment is really noble,” says Susie Orbach, the psychotherapist and social critic.
“But with injustices such as this, the word 'forgiveness’ is not really of the same
realm.”
Remember them?
Heres their story:
Michelle Knight took a deep breath. Staring straight ahead, mustering every ounce
of steel her petite frame could manage, she spoke clearly to the court. “After 11
years I am finally being heard, and it’s liberating,” she said.
“Writing this statement
gave me the strength to be a stronger woman and to know that there is more good than evil.”
Given the life that Michelle has been forced to lead, her assertion that there is more
good than evil is almost impossible to comprehend. Eleven years ago, when she
was 21, she was snatched from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio, by former bus driver
Ariel Castro. Chained and starved, beaten and raped, she miscarried his child five
times after he punched and kicked her in the stomach. She was joined in her
captivity by two women: Amanda Berry, kidnapped aged 16, and Gina DeJesus,
then 14. All three endured unimaginable horrors; kept in darkness, attacked and – in
Amanda’s case – bearing Castro’s daughter, Jocelyn, now six.
Amanda and Gina could not bear to be in the courtroom. But Michelle – the one
who spent the longest in captivity and with no loving family to fall back on – was
insistent that her voice be heard.
“My name is Michelle Knight,” she told the court. Speaking at first in a soft, girlish
voice, she quavered at the mention of the two-year-old son she had left behind
when she was abducted: “I look inside my heart and I see my son and I cried every
night. Christmas was a most traumatic day because I could not spend it with my
son.”
Behind her in the courtroom sat Castro, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his legs
manacled. His face was impassive, but his eyes darted across the room as her
voice hardened. “Ariel Castro, I remember all the times you came home and talked
about other things and said, 'At least I didn’t kill you’,” she said bitterly. “You took
11 years of my life away and I have got it back. I spent 11 years in hell and now
your hell is just beginning.” The death penalty, she said, would be too easy an
escape for him.
On Friday morning, Michelle Knight visited the white clapboard house where she
had been held captive – and which is due to be demolished – and thanked the
neighbours who had supported her. She didn’t go inside. Just standing outside, as
a free woman, was enough. She also expressed her gratitude to the Cleveland
police in a handwritten note, thanking them for “their time and work” and spelling
out her resilience: “Life is tough, but I’m tougher.”
She added: “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, she became the
butterfly.”
Castro, 53, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison, plus 1,000 years, with no
opportunity for parole. He had pleaded guilty to 937 charges, including aggravated
murder, rape and kidnapping.
“There is no place in this city, there is no place in this country, there is no place in
this world for those who enslave others,” said Judge Michael Russo, sentencing
Castro.
For Michelle, who has undisclosed learning difficulties, the ordeal was a horrific
chapter in an already troubled life.
Estranged from her family, she had no
triumphant homecoming, with balloons around the door, like Amanda. She had no
sister to welcome her into her home with a tight embrace, like Gina did.
On leaving hospital after she was freed from Castro’s house, in May, the authorities
didn’t know where to take her – she had no home and barely any family.
Details of her early life are hard to piece together; Michelle has not spoken, other
than in court on Thursday, and the scattering of family members that have come
forward appear to have drifted in and out of contact with each other.
Because she was an adult when she went missing in 2002, the FBI had removed
her case from its missing-persons database after 15 months. They suspected she
had just wanted to melt away.
In the weeks running up to her kidnap, her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Joey, had
been taken away from her. He is said to have suffered an unspecified injury while in the care of her mother Barbara’s boyfriend.
Michelle was said to be furious at her mother, blaming her for the loss of her child. It was widely believed that the 21-
year-old simply decided to have nothing more to do with her, so many people in
Cleveland did not even know she was missing. Even her own family were in the
dark.
“I was freaking happy as hell, because I didn’t know my sister was kidnapped,”
said Freddie Knight, 30, who is estranged from the rest of the family. “My mother
never tells me anything.” He said that their mother kicked him out of the house
when he was 14 and Michelle was 16. And it was around this time that she began
having serious problems, too.
The family grew up in Cleveland, a rough-and-ready industrial centre of 400,000
people that is surrounded by gritty, crime-ridden neighbourhoods. It is one of
America’s 10 most dangerous cities. But Michelle, whose father is unknown,
seemed to have a pleasant enough early childhood. She helped her mother work in
her vegetable garden and loved to feed apples to the neighbour’s pony.
As a child, Mrs Knight told Cleveland’s local newspaper, The Plain Dealer, Michelle
became fascinated with the fire engines that passed the family home on their way to
emergencies, and so, after a tour of the local fire station, decided she wanted to
become a firefighter. Then later, helping her mother to deliver the family shih-tzu’s
litter of puppies, she decided that becoming a vet would be better.
Her later teens were less happy. She did not thrive at James Ford Rhodes High
School. The school suffered from poor facilities and overcrowding – an investigation
in 2011 found a catalogue of recurring problems, including classes of well over 50
students. Michelle, standing just 4ft 7in tall, was nicknamed “Shorty” and struggled
to fit in. Her mental condition meant she was often confused about her
surroundings, according to a missing-persons report filed in August 2002, when she disappeared.
Aged 17, Michelle was assaulted at school. Her mother claims the police did not
take her story seriously and, as a result, she dropped out of her classes, failing to
complete her education.
Her great-aunt Deborah tells an even more disturbing story. Michelle was set on by
three male classmates and gang-raped at the school. Her son Joey was the result of
that attack.
When Joey was born, Michelle tried to create a positive environment for her son.
She lived with her mother in Cleveland’s West 60th Street and dreamt of returning
to study so that she could earn a living to support her new baby.
But that simple dream was shattered by the arrival of David Feckley, her mother’s
boyfriend, who was convicted of child endangerment for breaking Joey’s arm. He
served eight years in prison.
Court documents show that on August 26 2002 – shortly after Michelle had
disappeared – Feckley was sentenced. The court had been told about the history of
domestic violence in the household, including prior abuse of the child, and about Feckley’s lack of remorse.
Leila Atassi, the reporter on The Plain Dealer who has covered the Cleveland
kidnappings story from the beginning, explained: “Barbara Knight said that among
her own greatest regrets was becoming involved with an abusive man, who, she
believes, injured her toddler grandson – spurring a chain of events that led Michelle
to lose custody of the child.”
Michelle vanished not long afterwards, on a day when she was scheduled for a
court appearance in the custody case. She was last seen at a cousin’s house, not
far from her own, in August 2002.
Michelle ended up less than three miles away, at the home of Ariel Castro – lured,
according to several reports, by the promise of a chance to see some recently born
puppies. Police now believe that she was raped and chained up almost
immediately, beginning her 11 years of torture.
A year later, Amanda Berry arrived,
followed in 2004 by Gina DeJesus.
The two rooms inside his house in which the women were kept seemed like the
unremarkable bedrooms of young women, with Disney posters tacked to the pink
walls and stuffed animals lined up on the bed. Yet a closer look reveals 99ft of
rusted iron chains that Castro used to imprison them with, and the heavy wooden
boards with which he blocked the windows.
He created a makeshift alarm system,
removed doorknobs and installed multiple locks to prevent escape.
Jannette Gomez, 50, who often visits family and friends on the street, said Castro
would park his motorcycle and red pick-up truck behind the house, lock the gate
and enter the house through a back door.
Occasionally, he would turn on a dim
porch light, but the house was always dark.
On the rare occasions over the decade that he took them out of the house, Castro
would disguise the women in motorcycle helmets and wigs. In 2005, he locked the
three women in a car in his garage to hide them from a house guest, and at other
points stuffed dirty socks in their mouths to stop them screaming.
Michelle Knight became pregnant five times during her imprisonment. And in court
on Thursday, a 13-page sentencing memorandum, largely drawn on diaries kept by
the three victims throughout their captivity, described how he tried to abort a baby
that Michelle was carrying by putting her on a diet of only tea and forcing her to
perform gruelling exercises each day. When that did not work, “the defendant
punched and kicked her in the stomach, jumped on her stomach, and starved her
for days to terminate the pregnancy,” the prosecutors said. He went on to keep the
placenta in the refrigerator “as a memento”.
The killing of the unborn child comprised only a small section of the prosecution’s
description of Castro’s “disgusting and inhuman conduct”. Furthermore, the woman
who had had her own child taken from her, and miscarried five times, was forced to
deliver Amanda Berry’s baby – in a paddling pool, on Christmas Day 2006.
Castro said that if the baby died, he would kill Michelle.
Michelle, then 25, is said to have told investigators that she frantically tried to
resuscitate the child after it stopped breathing, using her own mouth to “breathe for her” in order to keep them both alive.
Dr Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist who specialises in Stockholm syndrome, testified
at the sentencing. “I would start with Michelle,” he said. “What an extraordinary
human being. She served as doctor, nurse, paediatrician, midwife. She did the
delivery… under primitive circumstances. And when that little baby wasn’t
breathing, she breathed into that baby. She brought life to that child. And she also
had circumstances in which she interposed herself so that Gina wouldn’t get the
assault. And she took it. She is a very courageous and heroic individual.”
The three women were rescued when Amanda bolted for freedom and called the
police. Wild celebrations ensued for those who had maintained the vigils for
Amanda and Gina. But Michelle, it seemed, had been forgotten. Her mother claims
that she flyered the neighbourhood after the police gave up the hunt, but it would
appear to have had little impact. No one really knew she was missing.
Five days after the women were released, Cleveland’s residents staged a rally for
Michelle – the “forgotten victim”. More than 200 people took to the streets of the
West Side neighbourhood, many wearing red ribbons in a show of solidarity.
“We want her to see that we’re here and that the whole city of Cleveland loves her
and we’re here for her no matter what,” said Fawn Cassidy, 44.
“When she disappeared, at one point, she was forgotten. Nobody knew she was
gone. She just got lost in the shuffle,” added Toni Urban, 56.
Michelle was sadly aware, during her confinement, of being left to her fate. “I was
so alone,” she told the court on Thursday. “I worried about what would happen to
me and the girls every day. Years turn into eternity. I knew no one cared about me.
I knew my family don’t care.”
Barbara Knight, now 50, was not contacted by her daughter upon her release from
captivity on May 6. “I just wish that my daughter would reach out and let me know
that she’s there,” said Mrs Knight, days after hearing that she was alive. “She’s
probably angry at the world because she thought she would never be found but
thank God that somebody did.
“I don’t want her to think that I forgot about her. Hopefully, whatever happened
between us, if something did – I hope it heals because I really want to take her
back to Florida with me.”
It has been a hope in vain. Michelle has reportedly refused to see her mother,
ignoring letters and pleas to get in touch. Some reports suggested that Michelle may
even move in with Gina and her family.
According to her brother Freddie, since her release Michelle wants only to “get her
baby back”. Joey, now 13, is believed to be in foster care.
“It’s interesting that Michelle Knight was the only one who wanted to speak,” said
Anouchka Grose, a psychoanalyst based in London. “She didn’t have the family
support that the other two did, so perhaps making the statement to the court was a
reflection of this. She needed to be heard. And had to do it alone.”
How the three women will rebuild their lives remains to be seen. And certainly
Michelle does not have an easy road ahead of her. She told Castro on Thursday that
she “could forgive, but would never forget”.
But can you ever really forgive something that incomprehensibly horrific? “The
sentiment is really noble,” says Susie Orbach, the psychotherapist and social critic.
“But with injustices such as this, the word 'forgiveness’ is not really of the same
realm.”
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