Michelle Knight on Dr Phil: “I was tied up like fish”

Michelle Knight, who was held in captivity in Ariel Castro’s house for 11 years, has revealed on Dr Phil show that she was hung “like a fish” from her feet and neck.

Michelle Knight, now 32, is the first of three women who escaped Ariel Castro’s abuse to tell her story at length.

She says she was beaten with a barbell by Ariel Castro so “the monster” could force her to miscarriage.

Michelle Knight recounted more allegations of physical, s**ual and emotional abuse in the second part of her taped interviews with Phil McGraw.

She appeared on the Dr Phil show in a taped interview and opened up on the horrors of being held captive by Ariel Castro for over a decade.

The woman survived the “horrible conditions in the house”, after being kidnapped, tortured and abandoned in a filthy basement, by holding out hope she’d see her son again.

Michelle Knight described years of physical, mental and s**ual abuse. That includes “being tied up like a fish” and spending weeks chained and tortured in the basement, according to the show.

Ariel Castro, who was imprisoned for life for the crimes, died in an apparent suicide in an Ohio jail in September.

Michelle Knight, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry were freed from his Cleveland house after Ms Berry managed to escape in May and call for help.

He abducted the women from the streets of his Cleveland neighborhood and held them for about a decade before they were freed.

Michelle Knight was 21 when she was kidnapped in August 2002.

Officials have said he kept the women chained for long periods in the house, beating, starving and assaulting them.

Ariel Castro pleaded guilty in July to the 937 charges against him, including multiple counts of kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder, in connection with the beating of a pregnant captive until she miscarried.

In a video published ahead of the two-part interview to be broadcast this week, Michelle Knight told host Phil McGraw she was “tied up like fish, an ornament on the wall, that’s the only way I can describe it”.

Phil McGraw told the Cleveland Plain Dealer after hearing her story, “you wonder how anyone lasted a day let alone more than a decade”.

“In the 12 years of doing the Dr Phil show, no one has changed me like Michelle Knight and her story of survival,” he said.

Phil McGraw also said Michelle Knight was “eager” to have her own voice after the years of abuse by Ariel Castro.

The interview will run over two days on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Phil McGraw said that out of respect for Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight would only discuss her own experience.