Life after kidnap: Ariel Castro's victims recall the horror of a decade in chains
When Amanda Berry’s toddler daughter had night terrors and started screaming and running around the room, Berry couldn’t always get to her — because she was chained and couldn’t move that far.
Big, heavy chains were a regular part of Berry’s life for years as she, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were held captive in a Cleveland home by Ariel Castro before finally escaping in 2013. So were repeated rapes and other abuse.
But the women survived, and now Berry and DeJesus have written a book about their experiences. “We are free, we love life,” the women said in the note to readers at the beginning of Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, which they wrote with journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan.
Hope was scheduled to come out yesterday.
Berry kept journals and other writings during her captivity; the book shifts between her and DeJesus’ perspectives and recounts what their families went through and what Castro’s background and life were like. Knight, who legally changed her name to Lily Rose Lee, has written a separate book about her experience, which was published last year. Berry and DeJesus said they invited her to write with them and “wish her only the best.”
Castro, 53, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years in prison. He hanged himself in his cell in September 2013.
The book includes a harrowing account of the birth of Berry’s child.
“I scream as the contractions come faster,” Berry recounts. “‘Be quiet!’ he [Casto] shouts. ‘Don’t be so loud!’ Handing me a shirt he tells me, ‘Bite on this’.”
Berry and DeJesus were teens when they were abducted, and they recounted how Castro was familiar to them through his children when they initially accepted car rides from him that led to their captivity. The years that followed were a mix of horror interspersed with odd moments of grace, like when the three girls had a pillow fight when Castro locked them in the garage.
Castro initially kept the women apart, and even when he allowed them to be together, he tried to manipulate their relationships with one another. The women described how he insisted the sex was consensual, that he said he had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child and wasn’t doing anything wrong. The women said he even talked about when they would get out of the house, wondering what moniker he would be known by. He insisted that if Berry wrote a book, she write “the truth,” that she had feelings for him.
The birth of Berry’s daughter in December 2006 was also a turning point. Castro doted on his child, whom he called “Pretty” and took her out and about in Cleveland. As the girl grew older, Berry wrote, it became harder and harder to hide the strangeness of their lives.
“There’s not a lot of good in his life,” Berry muses about Castro after the birth of “Pretty”. “It’s his own fault, but sometimes I think he’s as stuck in this house as we are. He and his ex split years ago, he hates his job, and he’s going to prison forever if the police find out what he’s done to us. Now he’s sitting here holding this beautiful baby who is nothing but pure goodness, and he’s happy. I think she gives him new meaning in his life.”
On the day of the escape, Berry said, Castro left the house without locking her in her room. She was terrified it was some kind of trap, but she took the risk anyway. They recount their mix of feelings on hearing of Castro’s death, with Berry in particular conflicted over the impact it would have on her daughter.
In the end, they wrote about the steps they’ve taken to move forward, such as Berry learning to drive and DeJesus getting a job.
Additional reporting by The Washington Post
