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 Gina DeJesus, left, and Amanda Berry are releasing a memoir about their time in captivity for a decade in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press) 
 
 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 erupt in laughter as gusts of wind off the Cuyahoga River turn their umbrellas inside-out and they are pelted by rainfall. 
 
 Their 321-page book, published Monday 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 DeJesus have never before detailed in public what happened to them. 
 
 Amanda Berry, left, and Gina DeJesus fight the rain and wind while walking in Cleveland on April 20. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press) 
 
 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. 
 
 She would spend most of her teenage years chained first in his basement and then in a small upstairs bedroom where no sunlight could get through the boarded-up windows. They often subsisted on once-a-day meals of cold fast food. 
 
 They weren't set on writing a book when they were rescued, but eventually they grew frustrated by the accounts and assumptions of others. 
 
 "I felt like there were so many people telling our story, what they thought was our story, and I just felt like maybe our voices weren't heard," Berry says. "I definitely wanted to tell my side. I think Gina, too, right?" She turns to her friend. 
 
 "I also wanted to talk to people to, like, tell them to watch out and be aware," DeJesus says. "I think we were just tired of people talking, trying to tell our stories, and they had no idea, no clue, what we went through." 
 
 THE FIRST DAY 
 
 Writing the book meant reliving the story. 
 
 The hardest part for Berry was remembering that first day — questioning herself for getting in his car, for not realizing what he had in mind, for finding herself in his basement and helpless as he ordered her to drop her pants. She had kept a diary, written in a series of small journals and on scraps of paper. That helped provide a wealth of dates and detail for the book, written with Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. 
 
 "I haven't talked about it, and I kind of just wanted to forget about all that and never talk about it again," she says. "But then of course when we talked about it with Mary and Kevin, it was just, it was just – it took me back there." When recalling some of those memories, "we had boxes and boxes of tissues for those days." 
 
 The two young women refer to the ramshackle residence at 2207 Seymour Avenue, now demolished, as "the house." Over two hours of conversation, neither ever says their kidnapper's name; he is just "him." 
 
 An empty lot at 2207 Seymour Ave. in Cleveland, where the house of Ariel Castro once stood. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press) 
 
 Castro was manipulative, shrewd and careful, initially keeping the young women separated and setting one against the other. Berry and DeJesus became friendly only toward the end of their captivity, and better friends after they were free. Relations with Knight still seem strained. A Lifetime TV movie based on her story, Cleveland Abduction, is slated to air Saturday, four days before the second anniversary of their freedom. 
 
 By every account, Castro was a brute, taunting DeJesus as a "dumbass" and beating Knight until she miscarried several times. He used all three as sex slaves, blaming his behavior on abuse he said he suffered as a child. Berry devised a code in her diary to track the number of times he raped her each day. "4X" is the notation at the top of some those early days' entries, "5X" on others. 
 
 When she became pregnant and was going into labor, he dragged a small plastic swimming pool from the attic to her bedroom, apparently to protect the mattress. Later, when he showed kindness and affection toward their daughter, Berry found her feelings toward him becoming more complicated. Even today, she struggles to make sense of that. 
 
 "I don't want anybody to ever think, 'Oh, how could you care for him after everything he did to you guys?' because I'm still confused to this day about that," Berry says. "There will always be this hate for him and for everything that he did. But when Jocelyn came, I just saw a different side to him. I saw him as a father to her. So it made me feel a different way toward him. ... 
 
 "I didn't want to feel like that," she adds. "That kind of made me feel, why do you feel that way? What are you doing?" 
 
 DeJesus' feelings toward Castro are simpler. "I can't stand him," she says. She is sorry that he committed suicide in jail, one month after being sentenced to serve life plus 1,000 years, because "I wanted him ... to suffer, the way he did us, what he put us through." 
 
 'THE WORLD KNEW' 
 
 When they were freed, Berry wanted two things: A headstone for the grave of her mother and a birth certificate for her daughter. 
 
 Her mother, Louwana Miller, had died during her captivity, in March 2006, still pressing the police and the public not to stop trying to find her. Her daughter, Jocelyn Jade Berry, was born nine months later, on Christmas Day. Berry believes she was conceived the morning after her mother died. The baby gave all three captives hope. 
 
 "For Jocelyn, I felt like finally the world knew about her," Berry says with a mother's open pride. "She was a person now. She wasn't a secret anymore. So for her to get her certificate, that was a big day." But Berry listed only her name on the birth certificate, not that of the father. 
 
 Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry's 321-page book, published by Viking, is titled "Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland." (Photo: .) 
 
 Both women have celebrated birthdays this month. Berry turned 29, DeJesus 25. Over a decade of terror and tedium, they lost the years when their friends and classmates were finishing high school, getting married, starting jobs. Those are fundamentals of life that they still are sorting out. Both now live with family members in Cleveland — Berry with her sister's family, DeJesus with her parents. 
 
 Since breaking free, Berry has gotten seven tattoos, most recently a large colorful flower that spreads on her left shoulder. DeJesus is thinking about whether to get a first, small butterfly tattoo on her wrist, in part to cover scars from the chains that bound her for so long. 
 
 That contrast mirrors their personalities. Berry, blond and sporting a pink sweater set and pants, is a fast talker with a confident manner. DeJesus, whose dark hair cascades onto her shoulders, is more likely to pause before she speaks, measuring her words. 
 
 When she finds herself remembering the difficult details of her captivity, DeJesus says she will "find a place to just put it like we always did," to compartmentalize it in her mind so she can move on. 
 
 For Berry, the sight of a box from Georgio's Pizza – the place where Castro frequently brought food home for them – or the sound of the Spanish music he listened to can trigger a flood of bad memories and a day of depression. A few days earlier, for the first time since she had been freed, she had found herself at the McDonald's where Castro had been arrested. "I had a funny feeling; I don't know what it was," she says. "Two years later, I still feel that." 
 
 Both have trouble trusting anyone they didn't know before their abduction, and they are sometimes uncomfortable when people recognize them on the street and want to talk or take a picture with them. 
 
 "I don't allow a lot of outsiders in," Berry says. "I stay with the people I know because I just feel more comfortable that way. You just never know, why do they want to be in your life, you know what I mean?" 
 
 "I feel like it's hard to trust," DeJesus agrees. 
 
 At the moment, though, they could be 20-something friends anywhere, sketching dreams about their futures. Both would like to earn their high school diplomas, to marry, to raise families, to have careers. Doing what? Before being abducted, Berry had thought about a career in the fashion field, though now she's considering psychology. For now, her focus is on Jocelyn, who started school last fall and is doing well, she says. 
 
 "I wanted to design my own clothes," DeJesus recalls. 
 
 "We should do that together!" Berry says, and they laugh. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1zard86 ||||| On May 6, 2013, the city of Cleveland witnessed a miracle when Amanda Berry called 911 from a neighbor’s phone. 
 
 “I’ve been kidnapped and been missing for 10 years. I’m here. I’m free now,” Berry, now 29, told the 911 operator. 
 
 Berry, along with Gina DeJesus, now 25, and Michelle Knight, had been held captive for more than 10 years by Ariel Castro. Castro kidnapped each of the women between 2002 and 2004. 
 
 For years, the women endured unimaginable abuse, as they were chained, starved and tortured by Castro. But during their captivity, they held on to the conviction that their families would never give up on them. That faith helped bring them home. 
 
 Sarah Baker, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 
 
 Berry and DeJesus together wrote their memoir, “Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland,” with Washington Post journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, and it was released on April 27. The two young women say they have since moved on with their lives. 
 
 In an exclusive interview with Robin Roberts, Berry and DeJesus discussed what their lives were like in captivity and what they are like today. Watch "Captive: A Journey of Hope and Survival," a special edition of ABC News' "20/20," HERE. 
 
 April 21, 2003: Amanda Berry Is Abducted 
 
 Just a day before her 17th birthday on April 21, 2003, Amanda Berry got up and got ready for work. 
 
 “I almost called off of work that day ‘cause the next day was my birthday. You know, what if? What if I would’ve called off that day?” Berry said. 
 
 On her walk home from work, she encountered a vehicle in a driveway. 
 
 “I kind of had to walk around the van and so I kind of looked at them, and it was a man and his daughter. And I smiled at them ‘cause I'm like, ‘Oh, she looks familiar,’” Berry said. 
 
 Later, the vehicle started to follow her down the street, and the man inside asked her if she needed a ride home. 
 
 “I said, ‘Yes,’" Berry said. "I see that the girl, there’s nobody else in the van anymore. It’s just him.” 
 
 The man, Ariel Castro, was an elementary school bus driver and the father of a classmate from middle school. 
 
 “He’s like, ‘Well she’s at my house. Would you like to go see her?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’” Berry said. 
 
 Getty Images 
 
 After they entered the white, two storied house on Seymour Avenue, Berry said Castro told her that his daughter might be taking a bath. 
 
 “So he said, ‘We’ll just wait,’” Berry said. “So he started showing me around the house. And I never got back out.” 
 
 Castro took her upstairs and showed her something strange: a mystery woman sleeping in a bedroom in front of a television set. She later learned that the woman was 22-year-old Michelle Knight, who had been Castro’s prisoner for almost a year. Her memories of what happened next are still raw. 
 
 “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 said. “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.” 
 
 She became Castro’s second prisoner. 
 
 “He took me to the basement and he taped my wrist and he taped my ankles and he put on a belt around my ankles over the tape,” Berry said. “He put a helmet over my head, and he said, ‘Just be quiet and don’t make any noise. And I’ll take you home.’” 
 
 Berry said he chained her to a pole, shut off the lights and left her in the dark with a television. 
 
 “I just started screaming and crying. And, ‘Somebody please help me,’ you know. And nobody, nobody came,” she said. “I was so scared that I was going to die. I didn’t think that I was going to ever make it home.” 
 
 April 24, 2003: Day 4 of Amanda Berry’s Captivity 
 
 As news of her abduction made headlines, Berry watched her mother and her sister on the TV in the basement. 
 
 “That kept me going. And I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to make it home to you. As long as you fight, I’m going to fight,’” Berry said. 
 
 On the fourth day of her abduction, April 24, 2003, Berry said Castro moved her to an upstairs bedroom and chained her to a radiator. 
 
 “It was really hard, you know, ‘cause in the beginning the chain was around my stomach,” Berry said. “Going to sleep at night, you know, if you wanted to toss on to your back, you couldn’t do that, you would have to take the whole chain and move it to the front of your stomach so that you're not laying on the big lock on your back.” 
 
 Heidi Gutman/ABC 
 
 “Well, the first week I was there was really tough,” Berry said. “So he eventually asked me, ‘Well, would you like to, you know, do you want me to get you something from the store, something to pass the time?’ So I asked for maybe a coloring book and something I can write in, a journal or something.” 
 
 He gave her a diary with a tiny lock and key. She wrote her first entry by the flickering light of the TV. 
 
 “You never know what you got ‘til it’s gone! I just can’t wait to go home. I’m 17 now, but don’t have a life. But he told me I’m young and will go home before summer. Another two months!” Amanda wrote in her diary. 
 
 One Week After Amanda Berry’s Abduction, Castro Calls Her Family 
 
 Berry was missing for a week when her family received a late-night call from Castro, taunting them, using Berry’s cell phone. 
 
 “He called and said, ‘I have Mandy,’ which, nobody called her Mandy but [people] who knew her,” said Berry’s sister, Beth Serrano. “'She wants to be with me.'” 
 
 The call led rescuers to within two blocks of Castro’s house. In 2003, the FBI was just starting to develop technology that could track a cell phone’s location if it was turned on. 
 
 “We spent about a week, around the clock, in that area, hoping that this phone would be used again,” FBI agent Tim Kolonik said. But Castro never used Berry’s phone again. 
 
 FBI 
 
 Meanwhile, Berry’s dark and filthy room at Castro’s house was about the size of a closet. 
 
 “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 said. 
 
 Once a day, Berry said, Castro gave her a bag of chips or crackers or other food to eat. But everything, including her weekly shower, came at a price. 
 
 “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 said. 
 
 Berry said she had to “numb” herself to the sexual abuse. 
 
 “You, like, put your mind somewhere else so that you're not there. You know, you're not in that room with him,” Berry said. 
 
 In her diary, Berry used a code to record how many times he raped her. 
 
 “I would always write these numbers at the top of the pages, ‘cause 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. 
 
 Months into Berry’s captivity, Castro made her a disturbing promise. 
 
 “He would always tell me when he got another girl in the house that you know, ‘I’m just looking for this, another girl and then I will take you home,’” Berry said. 
 
 Almost a year after Berry became his prisoner, Castro went on the prowl again just five blocks away from the street where he kidnapped Berry. 
 
 April 2, 2004: Gina DeJesus Is Abducted 
 
 Gina DeJesus, then 14 years old, was close friends with Castro’s daughter, Arlene Castro. Ariel Castro was also friends with DeJesus’ dad. On the day she was kidnapped, DeJesus and Arlene Castro were heading home from school. DeJesus gave Arlene Castro some of her bus money to phone home. 
 
 “I was like, ‘You could come over,’ and then she was like, ‘Alright.’ And she asked her mom, and her mom says, ‘No.’ She went the other way, and then I went the other way,” DeJesus said. 
 
 Short on bus fare, DeJesus started the long walk home when a maroon vehicle pulled up on the curb with Arlene Castro’s father at the wheel. 
 
 “He asks me if, 'You seen my daughter?’ I said, ‘Yeah, she’s right around the corner,’ and he was like, ‘Can you help me find her?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’” 
 
 Getty Images 
 
 When they arrived at Castro’s house, he asked her for help moving some equipment. DeJesus was unnerved by his bizarre 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.’ He said, ‘But you can’t go through the same door you came in.’” 
 
 Castro led Gina to his basement, where she said he grabbed her and chained her up. 
 
 “He didn’t make it tight enough, so I threw it over, and then I tried to run, but he sat on my back,” DeJesus said. “And then I just start kicking him. I kicked him, and I bruised him really bad.” 
 
 As Castro overpowered her, DeJesus screamed for help, but the radio in his basement and the radio in the living room were too loud. 
 
 For the first few weeks, Castro only talked to and touched DeJesus. The first time DeJesus said he raped her was on May 7, 2004. Though she remembers the exact date, DeJesus said it was too painful to discuss the details of what happened. 
 
 Life in Captivity 
 
 At first, DeJesus was Castro’s new favorite. 
 
 “’He seems to treat me better than the other girls. I have the nicer room. He lets me eat first. I wonder if he’s kinder to me, because I'm the new girl,’” DeJesus wrote in her and Berry’s memoir, “Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland.” “’I wonder what happens, when I’m not new anymore.’” 
 
 As the “new girl,” she slowly learned about the rigid house rules that Castro ruthlessly enforced. The calculated deprivation drove the girls apart. 
 
 “It could be from getting more food, less food, different clothes. It was just simple things, but when you don’t have anything, you’re like, ‘Well, why don’t I have that? I want that.’” 
 
 FBI 
 
 To fill the empty hours, Berry kept a diary in notebooks, on napkins and even on fast food bags. And the black-and-white television was their only window to the outside world. 
 
 But one of the cruelest things he did, Berry and DeJesus said, was play mind games with them. At one point, DeJesus said Castro asked her to play “Russian Roulette” with him, taking turns pointing a gun at each other. 
 
 “In my head I’m like why not, I got nothing to lose,” DeJesus said. 
 
 “He went first,” she continued. “So then he pulls the trigger and nothing happens, and I think then he gives me the gun and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m about to like pull the trigger and everything,’ and he’s like, ‘let me pray for a minute.’ And I said ‘what?’ I’m like, ‘why are you going to pray?’ So he gets on his knees and he starts praying. … So then I pull the trigger and nothing happened.” 
 
 Initially, all three women were isolated in separate bedrooms on the second floor. But on May, 23, 2004, Berry and DeJesus said Castro pulled them all into one room and forced them to watch an episode of “America’s Most Wanted” together. It was about DeJesus and Berry’s missing persons’ case, and their families were interviewed. “I couldn’t stand him,” DeJesus said. “But I couldn’t, like, show it all the time. I had to act like I, I liked him and we were friends, but I really didn’t like him.” 
 
 “There was just a gate there between the doors, and we would talk through the gate,” Berry said. “And when a door was locked we would, like, slide, like, pictures and stuff under the door.” 
 
 Once, when Castro’s daughter visited, he forced all three girls to hide in the basement. Though they thought about trying to yell for help, the women didn’t. 
 
 “There was always a chance, ‘What if he killed everybody?’” DeJesus said. 
 
 Christmas 2006: Amanda Berry Gives Birth 
 
 On Berry’s 20th birthday, she realized she might be pregnant. 
 
 “I was terrified. How? I mean, I barely eat,” Berry said, “and I’m chained to a wall, and I have a bucket for a bathroom.” 
 
 On Christmas in 2006, Berry went into labor. 
 
 “He got this baby pool. And he put it on the bed ‘cause he didn’t want, you know, a mess on the bed,” said Berry. 
 
 Castro called on Knight to help deliver the baby. 
 
 “Michelle was kind of just talking to me, like, you know, ‘Relax. Calm down. You’re OK,’” Berry said. “And he sat in the rocking chair right there just reading this book about, like, birth and stuff.” 
 
 FBI 
 
 Hours later, Jocelyn was born. 
 
 “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. 
 
 When Jocelyn was born, DeJesus said having the little girl there with them was a welcome distraction. 
 
 “It was fun because I can get away from the situation,” DeJesus said. “When I was playing with Jocelyn, Jocelyn made me forget everything.” 
 
 As Jocelyn grew older, Castro allowed her freedoms that Berry, DeJesus and Knight were not given. Though she was locked in with the three of them whenever Castro left the house, she occasionally was allowed to go outside in the backyard, to the park or to Sunday services with her father. Castro’s love for Jocelyn seemed to turn him into a different man. 
 
 “She loved him, and he loved her,” Berry said. “I was nervous, like, would he touch her? Would he ever think about touching her because, you know, he had his problems?” 
 
 May 6, 2013: The Women Make Their Escape 
 
 After 10 years, the women finally made their escape on May 6, 2013. 
 
 “So Jocelyn goes downstairs, and then she runs back up. And she says, ‘I don’t find Daddy. Daddy’s nowhere around,’” DeJesus said. 
 
 “My heart immediately started pounding," Berry said. "because I’m like ... ‘Should I chance it? If I’m going to do it, I need to do it now.'". 
 
 For the first time in 10 years, Berry said she found her bedroom door unlocked without Castro around. Downstairs, the front door was open but wired with an alarm. Beyond it, the storm door was padlocked shut, but Berry was still able to squeeze out an arm. 
 
 Getty Images 
 
 DeJesus said she thought Berry had been caught by Castro and talked Knight out of running to Berry. Outside, a neighbor saw Berry but was too afraid to intervene. 
 
 That’s when another neighbor, Charles Ramsey, showed up. 
 
 “He kind of, like, started like trying to pull on the door, but he couldn’t get it open either,” Berry said. “And so he, like, kind of kicks it, and he’s like, ‘There you go. Finish kicking it out, and you can get out.’” 
 
 After kicking the way out for her and Jocelyn, Berry called 911, and police arrived and rescued DeJesus and Knight. 
 
 “I was terrified. And just because there’s people on the street doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t hurt me. I was so terrified,” Berry said. “I still don’t know why he left that day with the door unlocked. I will never know.” 
 
 Heidi Gutman/ABC 
 
 What Life Is Like For Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus Today 
 
 On Aug. 1, 2013, Castro was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years in prison after he pled guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping and rape. On Sept. 3, 2013, he was found dead in his prison cell after committing suicide by hanging. 
 
 The two women rarely make public appearances since their escape, but have both moved on with their lives. DeJesus is in school and has her driver’s license, and Berry said life now is “great.” 
 
 Berry and DeJesus remain good friends. And though neither keeps in touch with Knight, they both wish her well. 
 
 “We just have a bright future, and [will] see what comes,” Berry said.
– The nightmare of captivity ended for Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight on May 6, 2013, when the women were freed from Ariel Castro's Cleveland home. Berry and DeJesus now describe their ordeal in a 321-page memoir out today. Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland marks the first time the pair are going public with the details of their experience, reports USA Today, and was written with the help of Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. (Knight has spoken out on a number of occasions.) ABC News has details: Berry describes arriving at Castro's home on April 21, 2003; she entered his home after accepting a ride from him, believing his daughter (her classmate) was inside. "He started showing me around the house. And I never got back out." She says he took her to a bedroom and instructed her to "pull down my pants. And from there I knew, like, this was not going to be good." Berry says Castro later asked her if he could get her something "to pass the time." She requested a journal, and he got her a diary, the kind with a small lock and key. In it, she used a code to log the number of times Castro raped her, thinking "one day maybe authorities will get to read it." USA Today notes some days bear the letters "4X" and "5X." Berry reveals Castro called her family using her cell phone about a week after she disappeared, and referred to her by a nickname only those close to her used: Mandy. Authorities got within two blocks of his home, but cell-tracking technology was still in its infancy. "We spent about a week, around the clock, in that area, hoping that this phone would be used again," says an FBI agent. It wasn't. Castro also lured DeJesus into his car by using a story about his daughter. They went to his home, and he "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.’ He said, 'But you can't go through the same door you came in.'" They entered the basement, where she tried to run. "He sat on my back." She kicked him so hard he bruised, she says.