Crime Watch Daily exclusive: Elizabeth Smart sits down with Amanda Berry
03/01/2017 11:51 am PST
It's impossible to know the terror of being kidnapped and held hostage for weeks, months, even years -- unless you've experienced it firsthand.
In a Crime Watch Daily exclusive, two people who survived that hell are meeting for the first time Elizabeth Smart and one of the victims of Ariel Castro, Amanda Berry.
It was a story that shocked America: Three young women held captive for 10 years in a monster's house of horrors.
But there was someone that news of their ordeal struck in a uniquely personal way. Crime Watch Daily Special Correspondent Elizabeth Smart had survived an almost identical living nightmare herself when she was just 14.
Smart sits down with Amanda Berry in an emotional meeting between two of the world's most famous kidnapping survivors, talking survivor to survivor, and woman to woman.
Amanda Berry vanished on April 21, 2003, the night before her 17th birthday. She was lured into a van by a sexual predator named Ariel Castro while she was walking home from work.
And for the next 10 years, Berry was held prisoner in Castro's Cleveland home, along with two other victims he'd abducted: Gina DeJesus, 14, in April 2004; and Michelle Knight, 21, in August 2002.
How did seeing her family on the news searching for her affect Berry?
"Oh my goodness, I mean, without seeing them I don't know how long I actually could have gone on, not knowing if they were looking for me," said Berry.
"It was sad because they were crying, but to see their face it just gave me, you know what I mean, like in my heart," said Berry.
Elizabeth Smart's parents were told that if Elizabeth was not found within the first 48 hours, the chances were good that she was dead."
Both Smart and Berry endured a similar ordeal of rape and captivity.
Amanda Berry suffered at the hands of Ariel Castro, a 53-year-old bus driver who kept her and his two other sex slaves bound in chains in his basement, locked in tiny rooms with boarded windows.
"There was plenty of days where I felt like not going on," said Berry. "Like 'Why, why should I go on?'"
"I could sum up my days in three words: boredom, abuse and rape," said Smart. "That was my life. There were so many times I felt like this is never going to end."
Smart and Berry had each lived in fear not only for their own lives, but also the lives of their families if either of them had tried to escape.
"He grabbed out his knife that he had kidnapped me with," said Smart. "He said 'If anyone comes near this camp I will kill them. And if you scream out I will kill you.'"
Berry also feared for the safety of her young daughter, fathered by her captor Castro.
"I had her face to look at and remind me, 'Oh God, like this is what it's all for,'" said Berry.
Smart was rescued after she was recognized at a Walmart with her captors. Berry escaped with her daughter and called police.
Amanda Berry is still haunted by her horrifying ordeal. In fact Berry could not bring herself to be in the courtroom when Castro pleaded for mercy at his sentencing, saying he was an incurable sex addict.
"I am not a monster. I'm a normal person. I am just sick," Castro said in court. "I have an addiction like an alcoholic has an addiction. How else can I control that addiction?"
But the judge didn't buy it and condemned Castro to dying in prison.
"One thousand years to life," the judge said in court.
Castro hanged himself in his cell just a month later but he might still be preying on young girls if not for Berry's bravery.
Tragically, Berry's mother would die before getting to see her daughter again.
"I think that was the hardest thing, it was the hardest day of my life and it kind of still is, like very day without her," said Berry.
But Berry sees her mother's spirit in her own daughter.
"I really feel like she's an angel from my mom, so she has blessed me in a way that I probably can't even explain, like even as I sit here," said Berry.
Like Berry, Smart is also the mother of a young daughter. In fact, Smart is now expecting again. Both brave survivors say their children have played a major part in helping them recover from their kidnapping ordeals.
They continue living parallel lives in another way: Elizabeth Smart, as a special correspondent for Crime Watch Daily, and Amanda Berry as a crime reporter with our affiliate station WJW Fox 8 in Cleveland for a segment called "Missing" to help Cleveland Police bring missing people back home.
"For me it's really personal, and hopefully they know that they're not alone, and so there's somebody out there looking for them as well, and they don't give up hope," said Amanda Berry.
Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus have also written a book called Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland together about their ordeals. Michelle Knight, who legally changed her name to Lily Rose Lee, wrote a separate book called Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed about her experience.
