Details are slowly emerging of the nightmare endured by the three women rescued in Cleveland last week. CNN broadcast these photos today of the backyard of Ariel Castro's house showing the windows boarded up and this mirror for viewing anybody approaching. It's impossible to imagine what the women went through as they were held in ropes and chains or whether they will be able to adjust to their new lives. We sent Aaron Lewis to Cleveland to talk with the neighbours who themselves are still trying to come to terms with the horror revealed in their midst.
REPORTER: Aaron Lewis
For years the west side of Cleveland has been haunted by mystery. Unsolved missing persons cases, teenage girls who disappeared close to Cleveland's arterial Lorain Avenue. The families of the two youngest pleaded for help in the media, making Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus household names.
PHIL TORSNEY, FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Amanda Berry, she left work at about 7.30 at night. She was working at Burger King, got done with her shift and began walking away from work and that was the last time she was seen.
BETH SERRANO, AMANDA’S SISTER: What’s been hardest for me is that Amanda’s just been gone for too long and I want her home.
10 long years passed with no word.
BRANDI SAUERS RUSINSKI, FORMER REPORTER: When I went to Amanda's mum and interviewed her several times she would take me around the house and she took me into Amanda's bedroom. She left it just like Amanda had it because she thought she was coming home.
Then on a calm spring day in an unassuming house on Seymour Avenue there was the weak sound of commotion, a voice.
CHARLES RAMSEY, SEYMOUR AVENUE RESIDENT: I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of a house. I go on the porch and she says, ‘help me get out - I have been here for a long time.’ So I figured it was a domestic violence dispute so I opened the door, but we can’t get in that way. How the door is, it’s so much that a body can't fit through - only your hand. So we kicked the bottom and she comes out with a little girl and she says, "Call 911."
AMANDA BERRY: Help me, I'm Amanda Berry.
911: Do you need police, fire or ambulance?
AMANDA BERRY: I need police.
911: Ok, and what is going on there?
AMANDA BERRY: I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for 10 years and I'm here. I'm free now.
CHARLES RAMSEY: The girl Amanda told the police, "I ain't just the only one. There are some more girls up in that house." so they go up there, you know - 30 or 40 deep and when they came out it was just a-stonishing.
Three women and a six-year-old girl were rescued. Their story was unlike anything anyone here had ever heard, held captive and made sexual slaves by an unassuming school bus driver by the name of Ariel Castro.
JOVITA MARTI, SEYMOUR AVENUE RESIDENT: He was a good man. We knew him for a long time - For a long time and we never thought he would do something like this.
VERDI ADAMS, SEYMOUR AVENUE RESIDENT: I feel a little heavy hearted that a lot more wasn't known about what was going on in this neighbourhood. It's a surreal thing to think about but it does seem like a Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - for him to have had a normal life and then behind the scenes to have been a monster.
The neighbourhood began to talk, and suspicious details about life around the Castro house began to emerge.
ELSI CINTRON, SEYMOUR AVENUE RESIDENT: I saw the girl a few times. Few times, yeah. When Ariel would be home the window in the attic would be open and she would be out looking around and that. When he would leave he would close up the house, close up the window. I was worried about her because who is watching this little girl. I asked my little girl if he had a wife or anything. She said Ariel lived by himself so I was trying to figure out where this little girl came from.
Ricky Sanchez was a band mate of Ariel Castro for the entire decade that the girls were held hostage, the band would practise in his living room, in this house of horror.
RICKY SANCHEZ, FRIEND OF ARIEL CASTRO: I have been going to the house since 2002. And I never, never in my mind, I had never in my mind that guy has anybody in that house. That little girl came, show up, when I saw her, he say Ricky, here is my granddaughter. You know.
REPORTER: How did she seem to you?
RICKY SANCHEZ: Seems to me like shy, she didn't even want to say hi to me. She was walking towards the door. He got the door halfway open, about maybe two inches open. It affected me in a way that I told my wife that I can't even sleep at night time. It is different, you know I have a daughter. She is 20 years old. That could have been happening to me, you know. I wish, I wish that I would hear something so I can help.
After a stay in hospital the girls returned home to an outpouring of
community support. But all the victims immediately withdrew and asked for privacy - a single gesture by Gina DeJesus giving hope to former friends.
TALISHA KEYES, FRIEND OF GINA DE JESUS: This is so amazing, like I was in tears. It was nice to see her give that thumbs up too let us know she was OK, good to see her home.
Then reporters like Sam Allard began to try to make sense of what had happened in the house. Apparently the girls had only been allowed outside twice in the past decade. Articles were written about how the girls had been bound in ropes and chains. How Castro made them each a cake on the anniversary of their kidnapping. There were even testimonies printed about the girls' rape, pregnancies and torture.
SAM ALLARD, REPORTER, SCENE MAGAZINE: When women became pregnant he would starve them and then punch them in the stomach to force a miscarriage. One of the reasons the police were so ardently searching these backyards and digging up the ground and stuff is because they were looking for remains and foetuses and things like that. As gruesome as that sounds, it is disgusting to think it actually happened to a human being, it makes you question your own humanity and that there are people in our neighbourhood even capable of doing this type of atrocity.
The girls are now with their families, reunited after a decade, but hardly free as they are now fenced in by media and a watchful public.
SANDRA RUIZ, GINA DE JESUS’ AUNT: There are not enough words to say or express the joy that we feel for the return of our family member Gina and now Amanda Berry, the daughter and Michelle Knight, who is our family also.
Care workers like Doctor Lolita McDavid say the girls' recovery may take a lifetime.
DR LOLITA MCDAVID, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, UH RAINBOW BABIES AND CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL: Their families think that the 14-year-old who walked out going to school that day is the person who is coming back and that’s not who’s coming back. Instead you will have a 20-something-year-old who has been through absolutely horrific circumstances. They're going to need a lot, a lot, a lot of therapy.
For Amanda Berry a harder blow still. Her mother, after a tireless campaign to have her daughter found, passed away before Amanda was freed.
BRANDI SAUERS RUSINSKI: She made it her mission in life to find her daughter. She did everything she could and I hope Amanda knows that.
Ariel Castro was arraigned in a Cleveland court on charges of rape and kidnapping. His bail set at $8 million.
COURT OFFICAL: You bound and restrained and sexually assaulted. Never free to leave this residence.
$2 million for crimes against each victim, three for the girls and one for the daughter born in the house of horror, these crimes have shocked everyone including Castro's own family.
CASTRO FAMILY MEMBER: The little girl that was born, she is my third cousin and I wish to help them in some kind of way, because I feel very bad and I would never think that somebody from my family could do that.
ANJALI RAO: Aaron Lewis and the residents still stunned by the Cleveland nightmare, it really does make you wonder how on earth those poor women got through it all. Interestingly, one of the three women, Michelle Knight, has at her request not yet been reunited with her family. Her whereabouts are something of a mystery and the authorities say she is doing well. She released a statement saying, "I am happy, healthy and safe and will reach out to family, friends and supporters in good time."
Reporter/Camera/Editor
AARON LEWIS
Producers
AARON THOMAS
GARRY MCNAB
Researcher
DONALD CAMERON
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN