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Woman Held Captive For 11 Years Reveals She Is Now Happily Married

Woman Held Captive For 11 Years Reveals She Is Now Happily Married

Michelle Knight was one of three women who endured hell, but has now found happiness.

Tom Wood

Tom Wood

A woman who was kidnapped and subjected to horrific abuse for 11 years of her life has revealed on American TV that she is now happily married.

Michelle Knight - who now goes by the name Lily Rose - was held captive by Ariel Castro between the years of 2002 and 2013. During that time, she was subjected to physical and sexual abuse, became pregnant up to 5 times and was forced to miscarry on several occasions.

But she spoke with a smile on her face to Dr Phil on his show about how she has been happily married for a couple of years now to a 39-year-old man called Miguel. They married in 2015, just two years after she was freed from her ordeal.

Knight has written two books about her ordeal in the Cleveland house that Castro imprisoned her and two other women in -2014's 'Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness' and this year's 'Life After Darkness: Finding Healing and Happiness After the Cleveland Kidnappings'.

The episode of Dr Phil will air on 24 April.

Ariel Castro's house.
PA

Castro abducted the three women - Knight, Gina DeJesus, and Amanda Berry, after offering them a ride home. He then chained them up, sexually, physically, and mentally abused them over a period of more than a decade.

He would starve them, refuse to allow them to shower, and subject them to the worst kinds of abuse imaginable.

She recalled in one of her books: "Amanda's mother was on the news pleading for people to help find her daughter.

"The dude laughed. 'You see that? At least someone's looking for her. But who's looking for you? Not a soul. That's because you don't mean nothin' to nobody'."

On 6 May 2013 Castro accidentally left a front door unlocked. One of the women shouted through the storm door on the other side and eventually reached a neighbour who helped her to get outside the house.

Once she was outside she contacted the police and they stormed the Ohio address, at which point the other two women - Knight included - were rescued.

Castro was charged with 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 counts of rape, and two counts of aggravated murder for terminating the women's pregnancies after he had raped them.

Ariel Castro.
PA

He received a sentence of life without parole in August 2013 but committed suicide just one month into his life sentence when he hanged himself in his prison cell.

The house that the women were imprisoned in was eventually demolished.

Featured Image Credit: Dr Phil/OWN

Topics: US News, Ohio, TV