Michelle Knight expresses disappointment with Amanda Berry on Dr Phil
In the second part of her interview with Dr. Phil, Michelle Knight expressed disappointment with fellow victim Amanda Berry and said Ariel Castro treated her especially harshly because her family wasn’t looking for her.
Michelle Knight described her relationship with Amanda Berry as “ok,” but noted the two are “not best of friends.”
“Amanda was one of those girls that really didn’t get it,” Michelle Knight told the psychologist host, Phil McGraw, in the second of two taped interviews Wednesday.
Michelle Knight, who was captive in Ariel Castro’s Cleveland house for more than a decade, went on to say that their captor treated Amanda Berry “totally different” and this may have caused Amanda to look at “the situation in a different way.”
She explained that she delivered Amanda Berry’s baby in Ariel Castro’s home in 2006. She said that she was told by Ariel Castro that if the baby died, he would kill her.
Michelle Knight, now 32, said that the baby was born blue and that she had to give the baby CPR so that it started breathing.
While Amanda Berry was allowed to give birth to a baby that she and Ariel Castro conceived, Michelle Knight said she became pregnant five times while inside the house and each time, the captor caused her to have a miscarriage.
One time, she said, Ariel Castro jumped right on her stomach “with his feet and heavy body” in an effort to terminate her pregnancy.
Michelle Knight said she was starved and repeatedly punched in the stomach. She said Gina DeJesus, the third woman kidnapped and held captive in Ariel Castro’s home, helped her get through the miscarriages and cope in times of pain.
She recalled a time when she was forced by Ariel Castro to eat a sandwich with mustard on it, which she is allergic to.
“My throat and my body swelled up. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk,” she recounted.
Michelle Knight said Gina DeJesus got her through it and didn’t let her die.
She said she doesn’t understand why Amanda Berry was allowed to have a baby and she wasn’t.
“I was a girl that couldn’t be broken, a girl that couldn’t be underestimated,” Michelle Knight told Dr. Phil.
“When he found out he couldn’t control me very much, he didn’t want to give me a kid.”
“I think he liked her more,” Michelle Knight said of Amanda Berry.
“Cause he had an obsession with blondes. He would always say, <<I don’t want to make her cry, I don’t want to make her upset or I don’t want to hear her whiny mouth>>. He would try to make her happy instead of sad.”
Michelle Knight said she felt like she was the most hated woman in the house and that Ariel Castro would frequently remind her that she didn’t have a family that loved her and was looking for her.
“That’s the reason why I hate you,” Michelle Knight said Ariel Castro told her.
“Because I can abuse you and nobody would care. No one.”
“…And it would hurt because I knew my family didn’t care and I knew my family wasn’t there for me, cause they never was,” Michelle Knight went on to say in the televised interview.
Police did show up at Ariel Castro’s home once, according to Michelle Knight. But, she said, they left after no one answered the door.
There have been previous reports that a neighbor called police after seeing n**ed women on dog leashes, crawling in the backyard of Ariel Castro’s home. Michelle Knight called that statement false in the interview with Dr. Phil. She said that Ariel Castro let her and the other two girls out in the backyard at times, but that the scenario described by the neighbor did not take place.
When the interview turned to the day Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus escaped from Ariel Castro’s home, Michelle expressed sadness and shook her head as the television host played a recording of Amanda’s 911 call.
Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus escaped from Ariel Castro’s house on May 6, 2013 when Amanda pushed out a door and called for help. She ran across the street to a neighbor’s house where she made called 911.
“She didn’t mention us,” Michelle Knight said of the 911 call, which she called “sad.”
“Maybe she was angry about everything… life…,” Michelle Knight said in an attempt to justify Amanda Berry’s lack of mention.
“She just took a different road than everyone else.”
Luckily, when police responded to Ariel Castro’s home, they rescued Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus as well as Amanda Berry and her daughter.
Michelle Knight described the rescue as being like “a roller-coaster” and recounted how she wouldn’t let go of the police officer.
“The first thing I said is, <<We’re going home!>>,” she said.
Michelle Knight was kidnapped in August 2002, when she was 20-years-old, reports the Associated Press. She has been the most public of the kidnap victims since then and even made a visit to Ariel Castro’s neighborhood before his home was demolished.
Ariel Castro, 53, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
A month into his sentence, Ariel Castro was found dead in his cell.
“He took a cowards way out,” Michelle Knight said of Ariel Castro’s suicide.
Michelle Knight said she would have preferred he have spent the rest of his life in prison
“The pain he put us through is pain he didn’t want to go through,” she said.
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