She was rescued from Castro’s house in Cleveland, Ohio, a year ago, along with Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus. All three girls had been missing for years.
“I was in the basement, he tied me up to the middle of a pole in a room,” she tells Simon Hattenstone in an interview about her ordeal to be broadcast on tonight’s Dateline.
“My hands were behind my back. My neck was tied to the pole too, along with my stomach. There’s not a day that went by that I didn’t get messed with or hurt, in any type of way. “
“I would just pass in and out… that’s how the time passed.”
Castro raped her on a daily basis. He made her pregnant five times and beat her into miscarrying the baby each time.
“He would beat and starve me until I aborted… he blamed me for the abortion. He said I’m the one who caused him to do it.”
Knight was the first of the three girls to be kidnapped. In August 2002, Castro offered her a lift. She vaguely recognised him through his daughter, and accepted.
She wanted a puppy and he said he had some for sale at his house.
“When I got up the stairs, that’s when it struck me really hard… I’m never going to leave this place,” she recalls to Simon. “When I finally got into the room and he shut the door on me, I knew it was over.”
Amanda was kidnapped a year later, and Gina a year after that.
“There is very little times that I actually cracked a smile in that house. When I first met Gina I smiled. When I first met Amanda I smiled,” she says.
“That made me happy to know that I wasn’t the only one, but it also made me sad to know that they were here too.”
Michelle was sexually abused from the age of five, bullied at school, then ran away from home in her teens. She had a son Joey when she was 18, but he was taken into care and subsequently adopted.
During her captivity, she was sure her family would not be looking for her, and she was taken off the FBI’s missing person list in November 2003 as no parent or guardian could be found to confirm she was still missing.
“This is like my first birthday ever,” she tells Simon as she marks what's in fact her 33rd birthday.
“I’m able to be me… it’s just amazing feeling to have a house and a roof over your head.”
She has not returned to her family, but she does hope to eventually be reunited with her son. They’ve already been in contact through letters and cards.
“He needs to heal from what he heard and I need to heal from what happened to me,” she says. “So we both need our time.”
“I wish the best for him and I hope that he… I’m glad that he has all that he has right now.”
Ariel Castro admitted to kidnapping the three girls and was sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years. He was later found hanged in his prison cell.
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