Amanda Berry - Hope :A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland by: Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Mary Jordan, Kevin Sullivan

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First published by Viking Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2015

Copyright 2015 by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus

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Gina DeJesus disappearance has changed her neighborhood by Ariel Castro, Plain Press (Cleveland) , June 2004. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Photograph credits:

Insert Image : FBI/Splash News/Corbis

: AP Images/Tony Dejak

: The Plain Dealer/Landov

: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters/Corbis

: David Maxwell/epa/Corbis

: John Gress/Corbis

: SGusky/Cleveland PD/handout/Corbis

: The White House/photo by Pete Souza

Other photographs courtesy of the authors

ISBN 978-0-698-17895-3

Map by Daniel Lagin

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

Contents

A Note to Readers

We have written here about terrible things that we never wanted to think about again. But our story is not just about rape and chains, lies and misery. That was Ariel Castros world. Our story is about overcoming all that.

We want people to know the truth, the real story of our decade as Castros prisoners inside 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

For years we could see on TV that our families were looking for and praying for us. They never gave up, and that gave us strength. We videotaped news coverage of them holding vigils and replayed those tapes on our most desperate days. When it was very hard to believe we would ever be free again, and no longer enslaved by a cruel man, just writing the word hope over and over helped keep us going.

Now we want the world to know: We survived, we are free, we love life. We were stronger than Ariel Castro.

While we lived within feet of each other for years inside a very small house, our experiences were very different. Castro was a master manipulator who lied to each of us about the others so we wouldnt trust one another and band together against him.

To tell our distinct stories, parts of this book are in Amandas voice and parts are in Ginas, and we have clearly marked each.

Amanda kept a diary of more than 1,200 pages, and its entries are a key source for this book. They were written on McDonalds napkins and takeout bags, on loose-leaf paper, in a kids dime-store journal, and even on the inside of empty cardboard boxes of Little Debbie cakes. Ariel Castro also shot many hours of home video over the years, and together with Amandas notes they form a vivid record of life inside that house, which has enabled us to write precisely about what was happening on specific dates and times.

Amanda was only seventeen when she started writing down her thoughts, and especially in the early years they are written in a teenagers shorthand. A week after her abduction, for example, she wrote: I asked him when hes takin me homehe said MAYBE the last wk of June. I just dont want no one 2 4-get about me. Ima go 4 now. PRAY 4 me! To make it easier on readers, we have expanded that shorthand, and use italics when we quote Amandas diary exactly as written.

Other parts of this book involve matters that were taking place outside the house that we could not possibly have known about. To explain those, we have relied on Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, the journalists who helped us write this book. Their reporting has enabled us to learn about law enforcements search for us, the school bus driver who stole a decade of our lives, his violent relationship with his common-law wife, and his long history of domestic violence.

Mary, who grew up on the west side of Cleveland, and Kevin reviewed thousands of pages of police reports and court transcripts, watched hours of Castros videotaped interviews with police, visited Castros hometown in rural Puerto Rico, and interviewed Castros family members and scores of other people to help investigate how our kidnappings happened and went unsolved for so long.

Michelle Knight was also a captive in Castros house and we invited her to join us in writing this book, but she decided to tell her story by herself. She appears throughout our account when she had significant interactions with us. We wish her only the best as we all try to recover and rebuild our lives.

We are inspired every day by Jocelyn Berry, who was born on a Christmas morning in the house on Seymour Avenue. She made a dark place brighter, and in many ways helped save us.

Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus

Cleveland

February 10, 2015

Preface

September 3, 2013: He Is Dead

Amanda

My phone chimes. A text message.

Who could that be? Its after midnight, and Im in bed. Jocelyn is asleep next to me, just like every night since she was born six years ago. Thats about the only thing that hasnt changed in the four months since I kicked my way out of that hell house.

Im staring at the message from my aunt Susie: Did you hear that he killed himself?

I freeze. A minute passes, then another. Can this be real?

I start to feel sick. The phone rings, and its my aunt Theresa: Did you hear? Its breaking news on Channel 19 that Ariel Castro killed himself.

I slip out of bed so Jocelyn doesnt wake up, and I run downstairs and turn on the TV.

His mug shot takes up the entire screen.

Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro is dead. He apparently hanged himself in his cell tonight. He had served a little over a month of his sentence: life in prison plus a thousand years.

My stomach knots up. Its hard to breathe.

How dare he do this? How dare he?

He kidnapped me, chained me like a dog in his house, and raped me over and over. Because of him, my mother died without knowing if I was dead or alive. She was only forty-three, and I can never forgive him for breaking her heart.

But he was Jocelyns father. She loves him, and he loved her. He never hurt her. He took her to the library, to the mall, to McDonalds. He even took her to church. I hid the reality of 2207 Seymour Avenue from her as best I could, hoping that she would think her home was no different from anybody elses.

Ariel Castro deserved to be in jail, forever. But now that hes suddenly dead, I dont know what to feel, and that confusion is running in rivers down my cheeks.

Gina

Im sitting on the floor in my living room, talking to my mom and my brother, Ricky. Since I got out of Ariel Castros prison four months ago, I am with my family night and day. I hate to be by myself. Im still afraid.

I was walking home from the seventh grade in April 2004 when he tricked me into his car. I turned fifteen locked inside Seymour Avenue, and then sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three. He made me want to kill myself, and I felt so sad and alone that for months at a time I barely got out of bed.