![]() ![]() Then after ten long years, they finally got the break they'd been longing for when their captor left their bedroom door unlocked and left the house. Amanda became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Jocelyn, who spent the first six years of her life in this strange prison-like environment. Both were kidnapped as teenagers by Ariel Castro, a seemingly ordinary school bus driver, who kept them locked in his house for a decade, repeatedly abusing and sexually assaulting them. Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland chronicles Amanda's and Gina's stories. So along with the rest of the world, I was astounded when international news broke of their escape from captivity in 2013 along with Michelle Knight. However, like so many other people, I was also keenly aware of the low statistical probability of them being found alive after a lengthy amount of time had passed. I seem to recall the news stories in the early aughts about the disappearances of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, whose families were relentless in their attempts to locate them. Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland draws on the girls' recollections of their ordeal and journals that they kept to tell a remarkable story of faith, hope, and resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty and seemingly impossible odds. Throughout their ordeal, they often saw their families on television, pleading for their return, and it gave them the strength they needed to keep going until one day, Castro finally made a mistake that made it possible for Amanda to escape and call for help. Their lives became a constant cycle of abuse, threats, and sexual assaults, with Amanda even giving birth to a daughter while in captivity. For the next decade, the girls lived locked up in a bedroom in Castro's house with neighbors and the law enforcement officers who were searching for them none the wiser. Their families immediately began searching and never gave up hope of finding them alive, even as year after year passed by. The disappearances of Amanda and Gina made headline news, not only in the city of Cleveland where they lived, but all around the country. One year later, he struck again, this time taking fourteen-year-old Gina DeJesus, his own daughter's best friend. Little did she realize at the time that he'd already kidnapped another young woman a year earlier. Castro was a local school bus driver and Amanda knew two of his children. On April 21, 2003, Amanda Berry was abducted on her way home from work by Ariel Castro one day before her seventeenth birthday. Evernight Teen Summer Kick-off Blog Hopīy: Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Mary Jordan, Kevin Sullivan.Cosmo Red Hot Reads from Harlequin Launch.
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