By Rachel Vachon | Echo
After a scream pierced the air in a Cleveland neighborhood Monday night, Charles Ramsey rushed to find the source, according to CNN. Ramsey then helped free Amanda Berry from the house next door to Ramsey's. After she escaped, he helped her call 911.
Berry, her six-year-old daughter and two other women were found in the house after having disappeared from the Cleveland area 10 years ago, according to the BBC. Gina DeJesus, who went missing in 2004, and Michelle Knight, who disappeared in 2002, were rescued along with Berry, who vanished in 2003.
Kidnapper Ariel Castro was charged Wednesday with raping and kidnapping the three women, which led to Berry's daughter, who was born during her imprisonment, according to Reuters. His two brothers, Pedro and Onil Castro, do not appear to be involved as originally thought.
Investigators said it appeared the women were bound with ropes and chains and were subjected to long psychological and sexual abuse, leading to miscarriages, The Associated Press said. The women remember being outside twice over the last decade, and then in disguise.
"It sounds pretty gruesome," said City Councilman Brian Cummins to the AP, regarding how the women were treated.
Although no one suspected Castro in the disappearance of the women, he had been examined for other incidents before. After unintentionally leaving a child on one of the buses he drove in 2004 and attending a hearing for negligence of his passengers in 2009, Castro was fired for showing a lack of judgment in 2012, according to The New York Times.
After the women were rescued and examined at a local hospital Monday evening, they were reunited with their families, according to the BBC. The three women were released from the hospital on Tuesday. None of the women have spoken publicly about their captivity, Reuters reported.Long-term abduction victims such as Jaycee Duggard, who was rescued in 2009 after being imprisoned for 18 years, and Elizabeth Smart, who was was held captive for nine months and released in 2002, offer words of comfort and understanding to Berry, DeJesus and Knight, CNN reported.
"I want them to know that nothing that has happened to them will ever diminish their value and it should never hold them back from doing what they want to do," Smart told CNN.
John D. Ryan, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said that long-term abductions are not unusual anymore, according to CNN.
"To us at the National Center, this is not something that we find shocking anymore," Ryan said. "The fact is, we have seen more and more long-term missing cases end up in the victim being rescued many years after their original abduction."
