#Hope a memoir of survival in cleveland plus#
#Hope a memoir of survival in cleveland windows#

She gave birth in an unfilled plastic swimming pool on a bed.Ĭastro beat and yelled at the women throughout their captivity. The second victim, Amanda Berry, was allowed to carry her pregnancy to term. The first victim, Michelle Knight, became pregnant at least once, but Castro beat her to force her to miscarry. During the summers they had no ventilation while temperatures climbed into the 90s. Castro fed the women only once a day if that, usually at night, and then usually just cold fast food. The victims weren’t allowed to use the toilet, instead having to make use of trash cans in their rooms. Doors locked only from the outside, with no knobs.īathing took place at Castro’s whim, and often provided him an opportunity for another rape.

#Hope a memoir of survival in cleveland windows#

Windows were boarded over and covered with curtains. The women weren’t even aware of one another’s presence for some time because of the loud music, their isolation from one another and their inability to move far because of their heavy padlocked chains. He concealed his prisoners’ presence by constantly blasting loud radio music and not allowing anyone onto the second floor of his house. Once the victims were in his vehicle, Castro drove them to his home, chained them, gagged them, raped them repeatedly - up to five times a day - and held them prisoner in the upstairs bedrooms of his unremarkable looking house.Īll three victims were small, no match for Castro, although he was only a paunchy 5 feet 7 inches. In two cases, the victims knew him slightly because he was the father of one of their schoolmates. The book is an easy read, although not necessarily always an interesting one.Īriel Castro lured all three of his victims into his vehicle with the offer of a ride. “Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland” tells the story of two of the women’s survival, with help from the Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-wife team of Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, both Washington Post journalists.

#Hope a memoir of survival in cleveland plus#

After serving one month of a life sentence plus 1,000 years, he hanged himself with bedsheets in his prison cell. The owner of the house, a former school bus driver, was arrested and convicted. Even more incredibly, two other women were locked in the house, and one of them was the other missing teen. Then on May 6, 2013, a woman escaped from a house in the neighborhood and gave the incredible news: She was one of the missing teens, now aged 27. Two teen girls vanished from their Cleveland neighborhood over a period of a year. “Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland” by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus with Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan Viking Penguin/Random House (336 pages, $28.95)