They were kidnapped, tortured and raped for ten years. One day they escaped...
"When we cried and showed him our pain and our sorrow he got energy from that and it helped him. We kind of learned don't cry, don't show your pain."
These are the words of one of the most astonishing and brave young women I have had the privilege to interview in my journalistic career.
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were each kidnapped in the same neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio, over a two year period and held captive for a decade until, due to Amanda's quick-wittedness, the girls made a miraculous escape along with Jocelyn, Amanda's six-year-old daughter in May 2013. Their kidnapper, torturer, the man who raped them hundreds of times, kept them in chains, often shackled together, taunted them, and half-starved them was a man known to each of their families, Ariel Castro, a sadist who knew each of the girls.
Last month I went to Cleveland for the BBC to interview Amanda and Gina, who are now ready to tell the story of their hellish incarceration and how they survived it. Theirs is a life affirming story about their inner strength, the bond they forged, and the triumph of the human spirit.
Amanda, now 29, and Gina 25, along with two award-winning journalists, Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, the latter of which comes from the working class district of the city, have written Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. Both young women have been very well cared for by a local law firm, acting pro bono, and it was to their rather corporate looking offices overlooking a still frozen Lake Erie that myself, the producer Rhoda Buchanan and a local camera crew went to prepare for the morning interview. The location was non-negotiable and our hearts sank when we saw the room. But with the help of staff of Jones Day we did our best to "soften the room" with furniture rugs and flowers to make it a warmer more intimate setting.
The previous day I had visited the site of 2207 Seymour Avenue, Castro's house. It was demolished after Castro's trial and conviction but I had seen a film of the run down clapboard house at the time of the girls' escape. I was amazed. I had expected a wide street, but instead it was perhaps only 50ft wide with houses placed close together. How could he have kept them prisoner without anyone seeing for ten years? Well behind the blinds were wooden boards and in the walled up filthy basement and behind padlocked doors he had made what were really soundproofed cells, chained the girls to the walls and to each other through the walls. When I stood on the pavement and looked around, I realised every house had its blinds drawn. He was four miles from where the girls' families lived, his own family had long since left because of his domestic violence, and in Seymour Avenue it looked as if everyone kept themselves to themselves.
Amanda and Gina never saw the sunshine or ate fresh food for years; their lives were lived in darkness first and then came dull electric light. They were hardly able to wash, and were fed junk food. Their only link to the outside world was the television and that was crucial. That way they knew their families would never give up looking for them. They watched every vigil, every television interview. Castro's cruelty knew no limits. He had been in the same class at school with Gina's mother Nancy and not long after he had kidnapped Gina, he went up to Nancy on the street and asked if there was any news of her daughter. He asked Nancy for a flyer, took it back to Seymour Avenue and showed it to Gina. Gina kept it, decorated it and when she escaped she gave it back to Nancy. I asked Gina why she hung on to it. She answered, "Because my mum was handing out the flyers and it was the only thing I had that was close to her."
Amanda managed to keep a diary on all sorts of bits and pieces of paper, and some of it in code. 3x, 4x, 5x referred to the number of times in a day she was raped. As she told me, "I knew eventually if we were ever freed my mum would read this and I wanted my family to kind of know what I went through and how horrible it was and I wanted everything to be accounted for and if he ended up in court for what he did to us they would know... I had to put it in code and I didn't know if he was going to go through it and if I had put I was raped three times then he would definitely rip it up and throw it away."
She also made a recipe book, meticulously writing down the ingredients from TV programmes such as Martha Stewart, laboriously stopping and rewinding the video - much to Gina's irritation - so that one day she would make and eat wonderful food - baking the way her own mother did. Sadly Amanda found out that her own mother had died on March 2006 from the television. She writes a letter to her mother immediately which ends with the words, "Why did God do this? I won't be able to even go to your funeral or touch you one last time. I love you. I love you. I love you. Thank you for never giving up on me and everything you have done for me. RIP. God Bless You. Love, Me."
When I was with Amanda and Gina I thought their poise was extraordinary. We did not dwell on the horror or the rapes and the mental cruelty, these are self-evident, but what I found most moving was Amanda's resourcefulness and her determination to be a wonderful mother to her young daughter who was born in a bedroom with the help of Michelle and Gina while Castro made sure no one could hear anything. When Jocelyn was a toddler, Amanda told Castro she needed to see sunshine - Castro allowed Amanda to stand hidden at a window to the backyard while he took her daughter outside.
When her daughter was kindergarten age, Amanda created one for her in a room. She walked her daughter round the edge of the room pointing out the cars and the traffic lights where the two crossed the road to the school. Jocelyn made the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and followed the Cleveland school year at her little makeshift desk and with her colouring books and Amanda for her teacher. They did reading, writing and arithmetic. When school finished each day, Jocelyn put on her satchel and her mother walked her out of the classroom round the edge of the room again. At the end of the kindergarten year, Gina and Amanda held a graduation party for Jocelyn. Amanda's determination to bring some normality to her daughter's life and her own redoubled efforts to survive and also to keep Gina strong are inspiring.
Castro killed himself in prison on September 3, 2013.
When the girls escaped after Castro for the first time ever had forgotten to lock the door on Amanda's room, Amanda Berry asked her lawyer at Jones Day for just two things, a headstone for her mother's grave, and a birth certificate for her daughter.
(Our World: Kidnapped for a Decade will broadcast on BBC World News on 2nd May at 4pm and 3rd May at 9am and 9pm.)