Cleveland Woman Held Captive By School Bus Driver For Nearly 11 Years, How She Survived
- 'Woman held captive by school bus driver for nearly 11 years on how she survived,'- ABC News, Jan. 2, 2019. *Watch the full story, TRAPPED on "20/20" Friday, Jan. 3, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Trigger Warning: This article contains information and details about sexual assault and/or violence, which may be upsetting to survivors. Resources to help survivors of sexual assault include the National Sex Assault Hotline (800-656-4673), and The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) online hotline.
~ Michelle Knight had known unimaginable hardship long before she was abducted in 2002 at the age of 21, then held captive and repeatedly raped and tortured for nearly 11 years by Ariel Castro, a school bus driver and local musician. She’d fought to overcome what she says was the trauma of sexual abuse by a male relative, living on the streets and later losing custody of her son. She survived still when she escaped Castro’s grip in 2013 and was told by doctors that she had only days to live. She continued fighting by facing her perpetrator in court. And, with time, she found love and created a new family to surround her.
“You can overcome all obstacles that stand in your way,” Knight shared in an interview with ABC News. “Don't let the darkness control your light in your life.”
- Knight and the two other women who were kidnapped by Castro as teens, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, shared their incredible stories of survival with “20/20.” Watch the full story on "20/20" Friday, Jan. 3, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.-
- Berry, DeJesus and Knight prior to their abductions.
Knight said she loved growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, but hated her life at home. “We didn't have a couch to sit on. We didn't have a stove,” she said. “Just to give us a hot warm meal, I had to cook on a space heater. It takes four hours for a hot dog to cook.” Knight said she was almost like a mother to her siblings. A brother, Edward Knight, told ABC News, "she has always been there to help us." Knight described her life as "traumatic," saying she suffered sexual and emotional abuse. You name it, I went through it,” she said. “I got to the point where I said, ‘I'm more safer on the streets than I am living in my own home.’ So, I basically ran away.”
She was only 14 at the time. “I didn't really know where my next meal was going to come from or what was gonna happen next,” she said. “I lived in a garbage can. I took a blanket from somebody's back porch. Cuddled up with it. … There was a bridge, where I can hear cars going past. The vibrations just, you know, helped me be calm.” She said she often sought refuge in a local Baptist church where she was given food, clothes and a place to bathe. “I [ended] up going there just because I heard beautiful music. And I was a little bit embarrassed because I didn't smell too pretty,” she said. “I stood in the back and singing along with every hymn that they were singing.” A congregant saw her at the church one day and reported it to her father. He sent her back to school where she says she was bullied. She started seeing a boy from school, got pregnant and gave birth to her son Joey at 18.
“I wanted to be the best mom. I wanted to be better than ... my mom,” she said. “It was difficult because I didn't have very much money.”
In the spring of 2002, she said, her mother’s boyfriend got drunk and fractured Joey’s knee. Social services eventually put him in foster care. Knight was desperate to get her son back. On Aug. 23, 2002, she got lost on her way to a case management meeting and stopped at a store to ask for directions. “I was trying so desperately to get ahold of them. I tried to call them on a payphone. It didn't work. So I felt like there's no way I was gonna make it,” she said. Then a man offered to help her. She recognized him as the father of one of her friends.
“He said, ‘I know where it's at. I can take you straight to it. It'll only take me ... five minutes.’ And I’m like ‘OK. I’m gonna make it. This is gonna happen,’” she said. The man she trusted to help her was Ariel Castro. But instead of going to family court, he took her to his home, on the pretense of first picking his daughter and showing Michelle some puppies. But his daughter didn’t live with him, and there were no puppies. He ended up holding her captive in his house more than a decade...
Read More, http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/woman-held-captive-by-school-bus-driver-for-nearly-11-years-on-how-she-survived/ar-BBYxxPd?ocid=HPCOMMDHP15
Ariel Castro Kidnappings, wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Castro_kidnappings
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