You'd be forgiven for thinking your Tuesday good news story sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Three Cleveland women, missing for over a decade, were rescued from a house where they'd been held captive since their teens. Three brothers, in their fifties, have been arrested.
Families and friends of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight are reeling from the news that the girls are still alive and appear to be in good health, though there's no telling the extent of psychological trauma they've withstood.
An article in CBC tells how neighbour Charles Ramsey came to the rescue after he heard Berry screaming through a narrow door opening. He broke down the door and called 911 after helping Berry and a six-year-old child escape.
"I'm Amanda Berry. I've been on the news for the last 10 years," she said in the frantic call to emergency services. She explained that she'd been held captive, and begged for police to come before her abductors returned.
The home where the teens were kept was just kilometers from the spot where they'd gone missing in 2002.
"I'm going to hold her, and I'm going to squeeze her and I probably won't let her go," said Berry's cousin Tasheena Mitchell. Sadly her mother is said to have "died of a broken heart" in 2006, following years of searching.
Though a happy ending, the story is terribly harrowing. I can't imagine what these women have been through. My mind is swimming with imagery from the books like Room and Silence of the Lambs.
But no one was more surprised than one of the alleged abductor's own sons. According to an article in the Star, as a student Ariel (Anthony) Castro wrote a story about the impact Gina DeJesus' disappearance had on his community in the Plain Press.
He described the proliferation of pictures of Gina "on telephone poles, in windows, or in cars along the busy streets,” and how her abduction had “traumatized a lot of people.”
Our thoughts are with these young women as they begin to reclaim their lives.
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