Fresh pain for woman who was held captive and tortured by monster Ariel Castro

A woman who was miraculously rescued from her rapist captor over a decade ago is facing fresh pain after having her animal shelter raided.  

Michelle Knight, now known as Lily Rose Lee, got the idea to start an animal rescue during the 10 years she spent in captivity at the hands of Ariel Castro in Cleveland, Ohio.

Lee, who founded Unleashed Animal Rescue in Elyria, Ohio, after she was freed in 2013, was left heartbroken after authorities raided the shelter Wednesday and took away nearly two dozen of the animals. 

'I got a huge hole in my heart,' told Cleveland 19 News.

'They took all of my exotic birds, all my exotic bunnies, they took my support animal and they took my little dog.'

The search warrant from Lorain County stated that the animals were facing cruelty, though Lee claims she never received any warnings before the raid. 

Lee explained that she received a notice from Friendship Animal Protective League saying that her animals were living in unsanitary conditions, had dirty water and that she had an emaciated dog. 

'You hurt innocent animals and you hurt innocent people and I don't understand. If there was something so wrong with the living conditions and the way my animals were kept, they didn't take all of them,' she added.

'I have lived a life of tremendous torture, problems and a lot of different things, but what made me start this rescue was Lobo,' Lee recalled.

'When I was held captive, he gave me a dog and when I tried to escape he broke that dog's neck right in front of me it destroyed my heart. 

'I told myself if I ever got out of the house that I would continue God's work and I would open up a rescue.'

Lee was one of three women held captive in Castro's Ohio home, where she suffered five forced miscarriages and lived in chains for over a decade. 

She was 21 when she was kidnapped and imprisoned in 2002.

Castro lured her into his car by informing her that he knew the directions to a social services meeting that she needed to attend.

He then persuaded her to go into his house by claiming his dog had just given birth, convincing Lee that she should take one of the puppies back for her toddler son.

Once inside the property, Castro locked her in an upstairs bedroom, chained her up with extension cords and masturbated over her. He then strapped a sock to her mouth with duct tape and left.

The other two captives were Gina DeJesus, who was abducted on April 2, 2004, at the age 14, and Amanda Berry, who went missing a day before her 17th birthday on April 21, 2003. 

Berry was kidnapped while she was walking home from work. 

Castro, who worked as an elementary school bus driver, approached her in his vehicle and asked if she needed a ride home.

Berry, who knew Castro as the father of her classmate and friend from middle school, agreed.

He ended up inviting her inside his home to hang out with his daughter, Arlene. Once she went in, she wouldn't leave for years.

'He took me to the next bedroom, and it was just really dark in there, and he didn't turn on the lights, and there was a little, like, a little room off of the bigger bedroom, kind of a big closet,' Berry remembered. 

'And he took me in there, and he told me to pull down my pants. And from there I knew, like, this was not going to be good.'

Castro chained her to a pole and left her in a dark room with a television on. 

'I just started screaming and crying… "Somebody please help me," you know. And nobody, nobody came. I was so scared that I was going to die. I didn't think that I was going to ever make it home,' Berry explained. 

A week after Berry went missing, Castro called her family with her cell phone to taunt them.

'He called and said, "I have Mandy," which, nobody called her Mandy but [people] who knew her, her sister Beth Serrano said. "'She wants to be with me.'"

The FBI was able to narrow down the phone's location to a 30- to 40-block area, but despite exhaustive search measures, they were unable to find Berry. 

Castro approached Gina DeJesus in a similar fashion as she was walking home. She was good friends with Castro's daughter.

Once she entered his home, she became unnerved by Castro's behavior.  

'He was, like, fixing his eyebrows and, like, trimming his mustache and, like, cutting his nose hairs,' DeJesus said.

'He's like, starts like, to, like, touch me and stuff, and then I'm like, "What are you doing? You could go to jail.'" 

'He just switches up like, "Well, OK, we're going to, you're going to go home now. But you can't go through the same door you came in."' 

DeJesus tried to fight him off and screamed for help when he brought her to the basement and chained her up. 

Her cries were drowned out by radios playing in his basement and living room.

'He, would take my hair and like, put it in his mouth. … I don't know why he did it but it was gross,' she said.

DeJesus said the first time Castro raped her was on May 7, 2004. Berry tried to record how many times he raped her in her diary by using a code.   

'I would always write these numbers at the top of the pages, because I felt like, you know, one day maybe authorities will get to read it. And he'll be punished for what he did,' Berry said. 

The women were forced to live in squalid, filthy conditions where they were chained in their rooms, their bedrooms locked, were barely fed and given buckets to use as a toilets. 

'He was always there watching every move, it was like he knew everything, every move that we did,' DeJesus said in a sit-down interview with ABC's 2020 in January 2020. 

'The mattress was old and nasty, and it was just disgusting. And we had the bucket to use the bathroom, and that smelled horrible,' Berry added. 

While imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom and, later, the basement at Castro's home, Lee was repeatedly beaten up and raped by her attacker, resulting in her becoming pregnant five times.

Each time, Castro would punch and starve her until she miscarried.   

Berry became pregnant by Castro when she was 20 and gave birth to a daughter,  Jocelyn, on Christmas in 2006. 

'I was terrified. How? I mean, I barely eat and I'm chained to a wall, and I have a bucket for a bathroom,' Berry said.  

She said life in captivity changed for her with the birth of her daughter. 

She noted Castro even became kinder and took off her chains after her daughter started to notice them. She told Jocelyn the chains were bracelets, per Castro's orders. 

'This is his kid, you know. How do I feel about that? And she resembled him a lot, and I would look at her, and I just felt, like, she's mine. She's mine,' Berry said. 

'It was fun because I can get away from the situation. When I was playing with Jocelyn, Jocelyn made me forget everything.'

The women were fed once a day but were given only chips or crackers or other snacks as meals. They were only allowed to shower once a week.

'I mean, he tried to act nice, but he's like, "Well, maybe you need to go take a shower," and I had to take a shower with him,' Berry recalled. 

After years of abuse, they were finally able to escape on May 6, 2013. 

They were left alone for the first time in 11 years with a bedroom door unlocked and Amanda managed to leave the home with Jocelyn and call 911 from a neighbor, Charles Ramsey's, phone. 

Ramsey said at the time that he saw Berry, who he didn't recognize, at a door that would open only enough to fit a hand through, screaming, 'Help me get out! I've been in here a long time.'

'We had to kick open the bottom,' he said. 'Lucky on that door it was aluminum. It was cheap. She climbed out with her daughter.'

As Amanda fled the home and ran across the street to call police, the two other women followed her out when law enforcement arrived.

'Help me! I'm Amanda Berry... I've been kidnapped and I've been missing for ten years and I'm here. I'm free now,' Berry is heard saying in the call to police.

'I need them now before he gets back!' she said in the frantic phone call to 911, going on to identify her captor as Castro.

Recalling her escape from Castro's home, Lee said: 'The first moment of freedom was very difficult for me as I was going through a lot of different things.

'I saw that police badge and I just ran into their arms and said "never let me go, never let me go."'

'When I was telling [first responders] my name, they looked like they'd seen a ghost or something. Like their face completely dropped,' DeJesus said of the moment police realized they finally found the three women.

Castro was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years, in prison on August 1, 2013 after he pleaded guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping and rape. 

On September 3, 2013, one month into his sentence, he was found dead in his prison cell after committing suicide.