“Right now, we’re all healing in our own way.
NEW YORK, May 5 (UPI) -- One of the three women held captive for more than a decade in a Cleveland home said Monday she has forgiven Ariel Castro and was "saddened" by his suicide. She said she seldom sees the two other women she spent so much time locked up with." Knight and two other women escaped on May 6, 2013. The murder charge involved beating one of the women to induce an abortion.
Castro kidnapped Knight, then 21, in August 2002. Sometimes relationships, including friendships, don’t last that long,” she said. “We were just in each other’s life for a short while in time and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get back together.”
When Castro pleaded guilty, Knight told him he would spend "eternity in hell" and that he stole 11 years of her life.
Michelle Knight, in an interview with NBC's "Today," said that after a Portion Cup year of freedom she is enjoying an "awesome life. Now, she says she has forgiven him.
Castro died in an apparent suicide in September, a month after he pleaded guilty to 937 counts that included kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder. In April 2003, he abducted Amanda Berry, who was about to turn 17, and a year later Gina DeJesus, 14. "Like why would he hurt his children like that? Why would he leave them?” she said.
Knight said she gets a lot of joy out of small things: “Being able to wake up in the morning, make a cup of coffee and sit there -- watch TV, listen to music and just look at the beautiful sky.”
She has legally changed her name to Lillian Rose Lee and uses the name Lily to mark her new life.
“I was saddened by it but also confused at the same time," Knight said of Castro's death.
“If I did something wrong, even if it was a small thing, I would want somebody to forgive me, so I can forgive him for what he done wrong because that’s the way of life,” she said. “He was a human being, and every human being needs to be loved, even though they did something wrong.”