The FULL interview with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus - BBC Newsnight

you need a police fire ambulance. I think it's okay, and what's going on there. I appreciate you, Matt and I have been missing for ten years and I'm here for over a decade. There was a dark secret hidden in this city in a quiet suburb. three girls were imprisoned tortured, beaten and raped Ariel Castro a school bus driver had kidnapped the three girls Gina DeJesus Amanda Berry a Michelle Knight in 2013 a decade later they miraculously escaped I had left work early that day and was working at Burger King I I called my sister for a ride she was at work and I had called a friend for a ride and he didn't answer so I started walking and as I was walking there was a VIN and it was in a driveway that I had to go.

Around me I looked up and saw a man and a girl in the band, the girl looked like someone I had worked with, so you know, I smiled at them and kept walking a couple of minutes later, the van stopped and said dunya, True, I was walking home. from school with her daughter Arlene Castro and she called her mother on the pay phone to ask if she could come to my house and my mother said no, she went the other way and I went the other way, he asked me if It seemed like his My daughter and I said yes and he said: can you help me find her?

I said yes and then he didn't turn around. I ended up going to his house. I had my Burger King suit on, so he noticed and I was talking about how his son used to work there and that I knew a couple of his kids, so it was kind of a casual conversation, yeah, and then of course , when you get to the house, you immediately know that he won't let you out, yes, Amanda. She had recently celebrated her 16th birthday when she was kidnapped once locked inside Castro's house and discovered her first victim, 21-year-old Michelle Knight, this is Seymour Avenue, less than four miles from where the girls were kidnapped.

Ariel Castro moved here in 1992 and was doing well. known in the area imprisoned the three girls here for over ten years they were chained most of the time raped over and over half starved sometimes beaten and never allies outside the dingy airless house at 207 Seymour Avenue has been razed to the ground now one less physical reminder of the girl's decade in hell Amanda, you had shown extraordinary foresight in keeping a diary, how did that come about? What did you do well during the first week? You know, he was just sitting in a dark room watching this little black and white TV and he asked me if there was anything you needed from the store.

You know, coloring books or something. I told him yes. You know a coloring book would be nice and a journal. You almost made a code, right? I mean the code. You were raped repeatedly, sometimes up to five times a day, but what you did was just 3 X 4 X 5 X. So why did you do that? I know that eventually if we were ever released, you know my mom would read this and I wanted to. That my family knew what I went through and how horrible it was and I loved that too. I wanted everything to be accounted for, but was it also a way of writing about the rapes but not writing about the rapes exactly how it chained you?

You know, when you're my teenager went through her wall into my world like through war because her room, my room, was connected a lot for a while and then I got split by my ankle, she'll think, oh, that. It must have been terrible having the chains on all the time, but also when he was physically abusing you, sometimes he had you in the same room, there were only a couple of times that happened to me and yeah, it was horrible, like he just I remember crying and saying no, but again it was part of the sadism.

I think the more we cried and showed him our pain in our sadness, like he liked to get energy from it, like she helped him, so we learned, yes, we learned. right to like him just don't cry, don't show him your pain, don't show him your anger, even though sometimes you are hurt, that's why he won't laugh from inside, one of the coolest things I think he did from the beginning. Did he tell you about the fact that he had been on his motorcycle and he saw your mother handing out flyers about your disappearance and he walked over and took a flyer from her and asked her if there was any information about you which was so cruel but you asked for the flyer Now why did you want to keep the wheel tell me why my mom was skilled at not shooting and I was the only thing that was close to her but you also wanted to decorate it and did you think I would be able to keep that fire until the day you saw, yeah, and That was important to you.

Gina's parents, Nancy and Felix, never gave up the search for their missing daughter. We did everything, any idea that came up, if anyone approached us, we took from Dennis. because we knew we had to keep it alive, we needed, we knew we had to keep it out there so that people wouldn't forget that you had the opportunity to see your families on television, that must mean heartbreaking, but it had also left you in good spirits, Amanda . Did you know that was the only way to know what they looked like? What had changed in a year. Now they were still fighting for you.

I feel like a piece of my heart is missing because it was just me, my mom, my sister, my two children, my husband. We did everything together when she disappeared, I lost a part of me, you know we were so close, she's my best friend and it was hard, but you kept going, you kept going because like I said, I never lost hope in my sister. If I didn't know anything about her, there was nothing wrong in my heart, you know, so all I can do is stay hopeful and keep going for Eugenia. You have a big family that's not fun and then you got to see them on TV.

Look at your mother, yes, but she appeared on television a little more and you saw it, but she saw the Royal Wedding. I told myself, oh, so it was the most important thing and all the news channels you know and I loved watching the news. They know what's going on in the world and they say, well, you know you have to wake up at like 6:00 a.m. and I was going to be on this channel, so I set my watch and got up at 6am. For me, that was just something that I don't know is the happiness of them getting married and seeing what their dress looks like and seeing all the people there and it was just beautiful.

Still one day when I get married and have a family, you know? normality and what did you think of her dress? I think she could have been a little more elegant, she is a princess, yes, three years after Amanda's ordeal, something would happen that would change the experience of everyone in sight. Amanda got pregnant. She had realized that she had become pregnant. I didn't get my period and that was like the first sign and then I started getting sick like I couldn't eat anything and I was just throwing up so that was the sign but you know he you don't want to have a baby in the house yeah cuz you know if the baby cries or you know the neighbors hear a baby or if someone comes to the house and what do you do with the baby, how do you keep a baby calm, but then the time came when I went into labor, yeah, I really didn't even I didn't even know I was going into labor.

I just had labor pains all day, but I had no idea what it was. Finally I used the bathroom and I heard something pop and I didn't know it. what it was, but then he says, oh, you know, I think your water broke, so he takes me upstairs to my room and pulls out this baby pool and that's where I went to bed and then I had the baby, so I'm going to do it. There was a mess on the bed so he asked Michelle to come and help me deliver the baby and he said in a rocking chair and write a baby like a book, how do I give birth?

When Jocelyn was born, did it in any way reinforce your whole survival? The instincts of the three of you that you had a baby in the house, I mean, how did it make a difference for Gina to have Jocelyn and me? I cried when she was born. I just thank God that she was okay because she could have done it. been otherwise, yes, it was time to go to school and you made the school tell me about a meeting with a kindergarten, we would wake up in the morning, have breakfast, pretend we were walking to school, yes, I try to make it as real as possible. for her, you know, then we would lock the door and walk to the school across the streets and I would tell her, you know, stop at the green light and look both ways when it's red and finally we would get to the school and I would sit her down.

Get down and tell her it's okay, I love you, have a good day and then she would make me her teacher. Then of course the day finally came, how did you get out? So Justin is going to come down because she was allowed to go down, you know when he wanted to. he usually had the door open so she goes downstairs and says, I guess looking for him and she goes up and says mommy daddy's blue car isn't here and I was like, what does that mean? You know, maybe he's in the garage, he goes look. in the garage, go look around the house, he's somewhere in the backyard, so she's okay, she's okay, because I have a really loud TV, but I heard her going up and down the stairs, I heard Jessalyn whisper and I just sit there and listen to everything and keep watching TV and see nothing, so I finally tell Justin that I'm fine, but then I try to open the door, the screen door, and there's like a padlock there, like a chain, so I'm like, oh my God, and I realized that as I was looking at it, you had to have a key, so I like it and I open the door, so I push it.

I'm thinking, oh, it's going to break easily, it's just a screen door, but it is. It didn't break, so at that point I was like, you know, screaming and screaming, and it was like I had so much space I could fit my arm through, so I had my arm kind of flailing. going crazy like someone please help me. I see this girl going crazy trying to get out of a house so she can kick the bottom and she comes out with a little girl and says call 9-1-1 Police Fire Ambulance I'm fine. What is happening there?

I think I've been missing for ten years and I'm ugly right now. I'm just out there and then an inherent camera that I just heard when the cops start breaking into the house and stuff. I'm not. Thinking about the cops, I'm thinking, oh no, he found her and she's going to be in big trouble. We also have Michelle Knight in the house. They put me in the back of the car when they entered the house and caught Gino Michel. and then they walked us all to the ambulance, so it was like the first time we were together and we were talking freely and she and I were sitting next to each other and she looks at me and says wow, like you know you're really free , you actually have an incredibly bright future.

What do you want to do more than anything one day? I want to be able to help other people who maybe don't have a voice or are so scared or who are going through something and don't know what to do or how to get through something. You know I definitely want to help people someday. One more thing when you hired a lawyer and he asked you if you wanted something. You only said you wanted two things. Which were? a tombstone a tombstone for my mother because she hadn't had one and a bourgeois gift for my daughter and what about you Gina what is your dream?

I want to help people like me and change many people you know who haven't

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y believed. that you were going out, what was it like when you went out? I still couldn't believe I was out and I don't think I realized - I got to the hospital and you were out in the normal world yeah and I was happy for you