Book review: Cleveland abductions a story of hope and suffering
Captive: The Story of the Cleveland Abductions: One House, Three Women and Ten Years in Hell tells the chilling story of terrifying sexual predator Ariel Castro, who abducted three women over a period of a decade.
During this time, Michelle Knight (21), Amanda Berry (17, who gave birth to Castro’s daughter while imprisoned) and Gina DeJesus (14) were tortured, starved and raped, all the while being kept in chains in his cellar.
The book relates to the haunting obsessions that drove Castro to enslave these innocent victims.
Each woman was kidnapped after accepting a ride from Castro. He drove each to his home, lured them inside, then took them to the basement where he restrained them.
Author Allan Hall manages, with honest brutality, to present a tale of fascinating morbidity, based on exclusive interviews with witnesses, psychologists, family and police.
Hall deftly paints the life of Castro from his childhood years to becoming an “ordinary” guy in the eyes of those who knew him, all the while harbouring a terrible secret.
Hall also poses tough questions, as to why an “ordinary” guy, who kept three women locked away under not-so-fortified conditions, never caught the eye of the public, and why the police failed for so long to find the women.
Castro’s psychotic life is also thoroughly explored against the backdrop of other well-known sexual predators, such as Josef Frietzl (who kept his own daughter in his dungeon for 24 years, fathering seven children by her) and also Natascha Maria Kampusch, who was abducted at the age of 10 by Wolfgang P?iklopil, for more than eight years.
Captive: The Story of the Cleveland Abductions is an unflinching record of a truly shocking crime in a very ordinary neighbourhood.
It will surely make you wonder and ponder about what happens in your own neighbourhood and behind all the closed doors you drive by everyday. RE
