Giving up U.S. citizenship
Upswing in the number of people renouncing their U.S. citizenship or residency, many over tax laws: CLEVELAND Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, freed two years ago after being imprisoned and abused by Ariel Castro for a decade, believe there undoubtedly are other young women being held captive today in similarly desperate circumstances.
“Stay strong and stay positive, and never give up hope,” Berry urges them, just in case they can hear her words. During their own captivity, they spent hours watching television, heartened when they saw news about their families’ appeals and vigils after they had disappeared without a trace.
“Know you’re going to have some hard times,” DeJesus adds, “but you can get through it.” They have. In an interview with USA TODAY, what is remarkable about the pair are not the scars from their unspeakable ordeal — though there are scars, physical and psychological — but their resilience. Berry giggles. DeJesus sneaks a cigarette. When a midday storm erupts, they start laughing as gusts of wind off the Cuyahoga River turn their umbrellas inside-out and they are pelted by rainfall.
Their 321-page book, published today by Viking, is titled Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. The third young woman imprisoned with them, Michelle Knight, last year wrote her own memoir, Finding Me, but Berry and DeJe- sus have never before detailed in public what happened to them.
For Berry, it began the day before her 17th birthday when she accepted the offer of a ride from a schoolmate’s father. She would be 27 and the mother of a 6-year-old daughter by her rapist before she would smash through a door panel to win their freedom. A year after Berry’s abduction, DeJesus was just 14 years old when Castro convinced her to get in his car to help find his daughter, a friend of hers.