On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made world-wide headlines when she kicked and clawed her way out of a Cleveland home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry. . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years. And I’m here. I’m free now.” So began one of the most remarkable criminal stories of recent times. With an offer of a ride, Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver with a history of domestic violence, separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his run-down West Cleveland house, where he kept them locked and chained in the basement.
In the decade that followed, the three were repeatedly raped, psychologically abused, threatened with death, and often fed one meal a day.
In the new book: Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on efforts to find the missing girls.
Mary and Kevin, a husband and wife team, report from Mexico for The Washington Post. They won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for stories about the lack of the rule of law in Mexico and the horrific conditions in the Mexican criminal justice system.
