Longest-held Cleveland kidnap victim Michelle Knight suffered such severe beatings while locked inside the house of horrors that she will require facial reconstruction surgery, her family said.
Michelle Knight, 32, was released from hospital on Friday, five days after she and two other victims Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, along with Amanda’s six-year-old daughter were rescued following a decade held captive in the dungeon-like home.
“When she was severely beaten, he beat her so badly in the face that she has to have facial reconstruction and she’s lost hearing in one ear,” Michelle’s grandmother, Deborah Knight, told CBS.
Michelle Knight told police that her alleged captor, Ariel Castro, repeatedly raped her and caused her to miscarry at least five times over the years by starving her and punching her in the stomach.
The news of her condition comes after it was revealed that Gina DeJesus’ family is planning to “adopt” Michelle Knight and look after her as their daughter because of Knight’s fractious relationship with her own family.
According to a friend of Felix and Nancy DeJesus, Michelle Knight initially rejected a meeting with her own mother, Barbara Knight, though it is unclear whether they have since met in the days since she was released from hospital.
Lupe Collins, a neighbor who helped the DeJesus family look for Gina since she disappeared in 2004, said Nancy DeJesus told her in a phone call on Thursday that she and her husband are trying to convince Michelle Knight, now 32, to stay with them.
“She was Georgina’s sister for ten years in that house and she’s still her sister now,” Lupe Collins said.
“They’re going to take her in as their own family member and help her.
“Michelle doesn’t want to go back to her own family because they abused her before she was kidnapped and they only want the money now.”
Michelle Knight was taken to DeJesus’s house after she was released from hospital.
