After a decade of terror, Cleveland captives on their scars — and futures, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, freed two years ago after being imprisoned and abused by Ariel Castro for a decade, believe there undoubtedly are other young women being held captive today in similarly desperate circumstances.
"Stay strong and stay positive, and never give up hope," Berry urges them, just in case they can hear her words. During their own captivity, they spent hours watching television, heartened when they saw news about their families' appeals and vigils after they had disappeared without a trace.
"Know you're going to have some hard times," DeJesus adds, "but you can get through it."
They have.
In an interview with USA TODAY, what is remarkable about the pair are not the scars from their unspeakable ordeal – though there are scars, physical and psychological – but their resilience. Berry giggles. DeJesus sneaks a cigarette. When a midday storm erupts, they erupt in laughter as gusts of wind off the Cuyahoga River turn their umbrellas inside-out and they are pelted by rainfall.Their 321-page book, published Monday by Viking, is titled Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. The third young woman imprisoned with them, Michelle Knight, last year wrote her own memoir, Finding Me, but Berry and DeJesus have never before detailed in public what happened to them.For Berry, it began the day before her 17th birthday when she accepted the offer of a ride from a schoolmate's father. She would be 27 and the mother of a 6-year-old daughter by her rapist before she would smash through a door panel to win their freedom. A year after Berry's abduction, DeJesus was just 14 years old when Castro convinced her to get in his car to help find his daughter, a friend of hers.
She would spend most of her teenage years chained first in his basement and then in a small upstairs bedroom where no sunlight could get through the boarded-up windows. They often subsisted on once-a-day meals of cold fast food.
They weren't set on writing a book when they were rescued, but eventually they grew frustrated by the accounts and assumptions of others.
"I felt like there were so many people telling our story, what they thought was our story, and I just felt like maybe our voices weren't heard," Berry says. "I definitely wanted to tell my side. I think Gina, too, right?" She turns to her friend.
"I also wanted to talk to people to, like, tell them to watch out and be aware," DeJesus says. "I think we were just tired of people talking, trying to tell our stories, and they had no idea, no clue, what we went through."
THE FIRST DAY
Writing the book meant reliving the story.
The hardest part for Berry was remembering that first day — questioning herself for getting in his car, for not realizing what he had in mind, for finding herself in his basement and helpless as he ordered her to drop her pants. She had kept a diary, written in a series of small journals and on scraps of paper. That helped provide a wealth of dates and detail for the book, written with Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan.
"I haven't talked about it, and I kind of just wanted to forget about all that and never talk about it again," she says. "But then of course when we talked about it with Mary and Kevin, it was just, it was just – it took me back there." When recalling some of those memories, "we had boxes and boxes of tissues for those days."
The two young women refer to the ramshackle residence at 2207 Seymour Avenue, now demolished, as "the house." Over two hours of conversation, neither ever says their kidnapper's name; he is just "him."Castro was manipulative, shrewd and careful, initially keeping the young women separated and setting one against the other. Berry and DeJesus became friendly only toward the end of their captivity, and better friends after they were free. Relations with Knight still seem strained. A Lifetime TV movie based on her story, Cleveland Abduction, is slated to air Saturday, four days before the second anniversary of their freedom.
By every account, Castro was a brute, taunting DeJesus as a "dumbass" and beating Knight until she miscarried several times. He used all three as sex slaves, blaming his behavior on abuse he said he suffered as a child. Berry devised a code in her diary to track the number of times he raped her each day. "4X" is the notation at the top of some those early days' entries, "5X" on others.When she became pregnant and was going into labor, he dragged a small plastic swimming pool from the attic to her bedroom, apparently to protect the mattress. Later, when he showed kindness and affection toward their daughter, Berry found her feelings toward him becoming more complicated. Even today, she struggles to make sense of that.
"I don't want anybody to ever think, 'Oh, how could you care for him after everything he did to you guys?' because I'm still confused to this day about that," Berry says. "There will always be this hate for him and for everything that he did. But when Jocelyn came, I just saw a different side to him. I saw him as a father to her. So it made me feel a different way toward him. ...
"I didn't want to feel like that," she adds. "That kind of made me feel, why do you feel that way? What are you doing?"
DeJesus' feelings toward Castro are simpler. "I can't stand him," she says. She is sorry that he committed suicide in jail, one month after being sentenced to serve life plus 1,000 years, because "I wanted him ... to suffer, the way he did us, what he put us through."THE WORLD KNEW'
When they were freed, Berry wanted two things: A headstone for the grave of her mother and a birth certificate for her daughter.
Her mother, Louwana Miller, had died during her captivity, in March 2006, still pressing the police and the public not to stop trying to find her. Her daughter, Jocelyn Jade Berry, was born nine months later, on Christmas Day. Berry believes she was conceived the morning after her mother died. The baby gave all three captives hope.
"For Jocelyn, I felt like finally the world knew about her," Berry says with a mother's open pride. "She was a person now. She wasn't a secret anymore. So for her to get her certificate, that was a big day." But Berry listed only her name on the birth certificate, not that of the father.Both women have celebrated birthdays this month. Berry turned 29, DeJesus 25. Over a decade of terror and tedium, they lost the years when their friends and classmates were finishing high school, getting married, starting jobs. Those are fundamentals of life that they still are sorting out. Both now live with family members in Cleveland — Berry with her sister's family, DeJesus with her parents.
Since breaking free, Berry has gotten seven tattoos, most recently a large colorful flower that spreads on her left shoulder. DeJesus is thinking about whether to get a first, small butterfly tattoo on her wrist, in part to cover scars from the chains that bound her for so long.
That contrast mirrors their personalities. Berry, blond and sporting a pink sweater set and pants, is a fast talker with a confident manner. DeJesus, whose dark hair cascades onto her shoulders, is more likely to pause before she speaks, measuring her words.
When she finds herself remembering the difficult details of her captivity, DeJesus says she will "find a place to just put it like we always did," to compartmentalize it in her mind so she can move on.For Berry, the sight of a box from Georgio's Pizza – the place where Castro frequently brought food home for them – or the sound of the Spanish music he listened to can trigger a flood of bad memories and a day of depression. A few days earlier, for the first time since she had been freed, she had found herself at the McDonald's where Castro had been arrested. "I had a funny feeling; I don't know what it was," she says. "Two years later, I still feel that."
Both have trouble trusting anyone they didn't know before their abduction, and they are sometimes uncomfortable when people recognize them on the street and want to talk or take a picture with them.
"I don't allow a lot of outsiders in," Berry says. "I stay with the people I know because I just feel more comfortable that way. You just never know, why do they want to be in your life, you know what I mean?"
"I feel like it's hard to trust," DeJesus agrees.
At the moment, though, they could be 20-something friends anywhere, sketching dreams about their futures. Both would like to earn their high school diplomas, to marry, to raise families, to have careers. Doing what? Before being abducted, Berry had thought about a career in the fashion field, though now she's considering psychology. For now, her focus is on Jocelyn, who started school last fall and is doing well, she says.
"Stay strong and stay positive, and never give up hope," Berry urges them, just in case they can hear her words. During their own captivity, they spent hours watching television, heartened when they saw news about their families' appeals and vigils after they had disappeared without a trace.
"Know you're going to have some hard times," DeJesus adds, "but you can get through it."
They have.
In an interview with USA TODAY, what is remarkable about the pair are not the scars from their unspeakable ordeal – though there are scars, physical and psychological – but their resilience. Berry giggles. DeJesus sneaks a cigarette. When a midday storm erupts, they erupt in laughter as gusts of wind off the Cuyahoga River turn their umbrellas inside-out and they are pelted by rainfall.Their 321-page book, published Monday by Viking, is titled Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. The third young woman imprisoned with them, Michelle Knight, last year wrote her own memoir, Finding Me, but Berry and DeJesus have never before detailed in public what happened to them.For Berry, it began the day before her 17th birthday when she accepted the offer of a ride from a schoolmate's father. She would be 27 and the mother of a 6-year-old daughter by her rapist before she would smash through a door panel to win their freedom. A year after Berry's abduction, DeJesus was just 14 years old when Castro convinced her to get in his car to help find his daughter, a friend of hers.
She would spend most of her teenage years chained first in his basement and then in a small upstairs bedroom where no sunlight could get through the boarded-up windows. They often subsisted on once-a-day meals of cold fast food.
They weren't set on writing a book when they were rescued, but eventually they grew frustrated by the accounts and assumptions of others.
"I felt like there were so many people telling our story, what they thought was our story, and I just felt like maybe our voices weren't heard," Berry says. "I definitely wanted to tell my side. I think Gina, too, right?" She turns to her friend.
"I also wanted to talk to people to, like, tell them to watch out and be aware," DeJesus says. "I think we were just tired of people talking, trying to tell our stories, and they had no idea, no clue, what we went through."
THE FIRST DAY
Writing the book meant reliving the story.
The hardest part for Berry was remembering that first day — questioning herself for getting in his car, for not realizing what he had in mind, for finding herself in his basement and helpless as he ordered her to drop her pants. She had kept a diary, written in a series of small journals and on scraps of paper. That helped provide a wealth of dates and detail for the book, written with Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan.
"I haven't talked about it, and I kind of just wanted to forget about all that and never talk about it again," she says. "But then of course when we talked about it with Mary and Kevin, it was just, it was just – it took me back there." When recalling some of those memories, "we had boxes and boxes of tissues for those days."
The two young women refer to the ramshackle residence at 2207 Seymour Avenue, now demolished, as "the house." Over two hours of conversation, neither ever says their kidnapper's name; he is just "him."Castro was manipulative, shrewd and careful, initially keeping the young women separated and setting one against the other. Berry and DeJesus became friendly only toward the end of their captivity, and better friends after they were free. Relations with Knight still seem strained. A Lifetime TV movie based on her story, Cleveland Abduction, is slated to air Saturday, four days before the second anniversary of their freedom.
By every account, Castro was a brute, taunting DeJesus as a "dumbass" and beating Knight until she miscarried several times. He used all three as sex slaves, blaming his behavior on abuse he said he suffered as a child. Berry devised a code in her diary to track the number of times he raped her each day. "4X" is the notation at the top of some those early days' entries, "5X" on others.When she became pregnant and was going into labor, he dragged a small plastic swimming pool from the attic to her bedroom, apparently to protect the mattress. Later, when he showed kindness and affection toward their daughter, Berry found her feelings toward him becoming more complicated. Even today, she struggles to make sense of that.
"I don't want anybody to ever think, 'Oh, how could you care for him after everything he did to you guys?' because I'm still confused to this day about that," Berry says. "There will always be this hate for him and for everything that he did. But when Jocelyn came, I just saw a different side to him. I saw him as a father to her. So it made me feel a different way toward him. ...
"I didn't want to feel like that," she adds. "That kind of made me feel, why do you feel that way? What are you doing?"
DeJesus' feelings toward Castro are simpler. "I can't stand him," she says. She is sorry that he committed suicide in jail, one month after being sentenced to serve life plus 1,000 years, because "I wanted him ... to suffer, the way he did us, what he put us through."THE WORLD KNEW'
When they were freed, Berry wanted two things: A headstone for the grave of her mother and a birth certificate for her daughter.
Her mother, Louwana Miller, had died during her captivity, in March 2006, still pressing the police and the public not to stop trying to find her. Her daughter, Jocelyn Jade Berry, was born nine months later, on Christmas Day. Berry believes she was conceived the morning after her mother died. The baby gave all three captives hope.
"For Jocelyn, I felt like finally the world knew about her," Berry says with a mother's open pride. "She was a person now. She wasn't a secret anymore. So for her to get her certificate, that was a big day." But Berry listed only her name on the birth certificate, not that of the father.Both women have celebrated birthdays this month. Berry turned 29, DeJesus 25. Over a decade of terror and tedium, they lost the years when their friends and classmates were finishing high school, getting married, starting jobs. Those are fundamentals of life that they still are sorting out. Both now live with family members in Cleveland — Berry with her sister's family, DeJesus with her parents.
Since breaking free, Berry has gotten seven tattoos, most recently a large colorful flower that spreads on her left shoulder. DeJesus is thinking about whether to get a first, small butterfly tattoo on her wrist, in part to cover scars from the chains that bound her for so long.
That contrast mirrors their personalities. Berry, blond and sporting a pink sweater set and pants, is a fast talker with a confident manner. DeJesus, whose dark hair cascades onto her shoulders, is more likely to pause before she speaks, measuring her words.
When she finds herself remembering the difficult details of her captivity, DeJesus says she will "find a place to just put it like we always did," to compartmentalize it in her mind so she can move on.For Berry, the sight of a box from Georgio's Pizza – the place where Castro frequently brought food home for them – or the sound of the Spanish music he listened to can trigger a flood of bad memories and a day of depression. A few days earlier, for the first time since she had been freed, she had found herself at the McDonald's where Castro had been arrested. "I had a funny feeling; I don't know what it was," she says. "Two years later, I still feel that."
Both have trouble trusting anyone they didn't know before their abduction, and they are sometimes uncomfortable when people recognize them on the street and want to talk or take a picture with them.
"I don't allow a lot of outsiders in," Berry says. "I stay with the people I know because I just feel more comfortable that way. You just never know, why do they want to be in your life, you know what I mean?"
"I feel like it's hard to trust," DeJesus agrees.
At the moment, though, they could be 20-something friends anywhere, sketching dreams about their futures. Both would like to earn their high school diplomas, to marry, to raise families, to have careers. Doing what? Before being abducted, Berry had thought about a career in the fashion field, though now she's considering psychology. For now, her focus is on Jocelyn, who started school last fall and is doing well, she says.
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