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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2013 6:12:27 GMT
Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus are ready to tell their story. The two are turning to Pulitzer-Prize winning writer Mary Jordan of The Washington Post, who grew up on Cleveland’s West Side and has a resume of distinguished reporting about women who have overcome tremendous adversity. She has been interviewing the two for a book. No publishing date has been set.  Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus have signed a book deal with Pultizer Prize winner and former Clevelander Mary Jordan to tell their story of survival. Berry and DeJesus, who, along with Michelle Knight, spent a decade in captivity -- chained and shuttered inside the home of Ariel Castro on Cleveland's near West Side -- before escaping on May 6, when Berry kicked out a panel in the front door and crawled to freedom with the help of neighbors responding to her cries for help. Though some details of their captivity emerged through court records, police reports and leaks, little is known about how the women survived, both on a practical level and on an emotional one. The women have rebuffed hundreds of requests from media outlets, many of them willing to pay for any nugget of insight. Aside from a prepared video statement Berry, DeJesus and Knight made together in July to thank the public for its support and to request privacy, they have not told their stories. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2013 6:13:20 GMT
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight would like to say thank you to people from Cleveland and across the world who have offered support to them. They are extremely grateful for the tremendous outpouring of kindness they have received and wished to put voices and faces to their heartfelt messages with this video. Knight, who is not participating in the book project with Jordan, is scheduled to tell her story on the "Dr. Phil" talk show in November. Phil McGraw recently visited Knight in Cleveland, according to WKYC Channel 3. Washington Post writer and Cleveland native Mary Jordan said in a statement that she and her husband, Washington Post colleague Kevin Sullivan, will work on the book with Berry and DeJesus. Jordan and Sullivan won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for their articles on conditions in Mexico's criminal justice system. The lawyer Wooley said Berry and DeJesus were interested in countering "inaccuracies" that have been told about them. "Our clients have a strong desire for privacy, but it is a reality that confronts them every day," Wooley's statement said. "Gina, Amanda and their families have decided to take control and are now interested in telling the story of what happened to them." |
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2013 7:57:48 GMT
Ohio kidnapping victim Michelle Knight describes to Dr. Phil what it was like being held captive by Ariel Castro. Mr McGraw told the Cleveland Plain Dealer after hearing her story, "you wonder how anyone lasted a day let alone more than a decade". "In the 12 years of doing the Dr Phil show, no one has changed me like Michelle Knight and her story of survival," he said. Mr McGraw also said Ms Knight was "eager" to have her own voice after the years of abuse by Castro.  Michelle Knight, the first of three Cleveland women abducted by Ariel Castro, has been interviewed by Phil McGraw for a two-part installment of his syndicated show, "Dr. Phil." The episodes will air at 5 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, Nov. 5-6, on WKYC Channel 3. |
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Post by Admin on Dec 5, 2013 15:40:38 GMT
Corrections officers looking inside Ariel Castro's cell found him with a sheet tied around his neck, his knees bent, his shorts around his ankles, 27 minutes after their last look. They also found that the convicted kidnapper had apparently done more than kill himself that day, according to a report on Castro's death from the Ohio State Highway Patrol. He wrote a note -- dated that same day, September 3 -- invoking scripture and saying that those who confessed with their heart "will be saved."  "God loves you," Castro wrote in all capital letters, "for all are sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. Christ is my saviour and yours!!" Did this constitute a suicide note? That's subject to interpretation; the only person who would know it, Castro, isn't alive to answer. But the report released Wednesday indicates that he did indeed kill himself. In the process, it also refuted a theory he died accidentally while engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation, with state patrol spokeswoman Lt. Anne Ralston saying no evidence was found to support this claim. |
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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2014 6:00:56 GMT
The three women who survived a decade-long captivity in a Cleveland house before being freed received Gov. John Kasich's annual courage awards on Monday night. "It is also a story of three women who found an inner strength and a courage that brought them through and sustained them," Kasich said near the end of his annual State of the State speech. "No one rescued them, they rescued themselves_first by staying strong and by sticking together, and then by literally breaking out into freedom."  The presentation nearly overshadowed Kasich's speech given the women's popularity since their release. They were household names in Cleveland for years as missing persons, and their discovery electrified a community accustomed to bleaker outcomes.  Ohio Gov. John Kasich, from left, talks with Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight after they received the Governor's Courage Award, during Mr. Kasich's State of the State address at the Performing Arts Center in Medina, Ohio, on Monday, Feb. 24, 2014. Kasich hugged the women as he entered the hall before his speech and pictures of that moment quickly flew across cyberspace. As he announced the awards, Kasich called them "three extraordinary women, who despite having the worst in this world thrown at them, rose above it and emerged not as victims, but as victors." |
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