Devastating.
Netflix viewers have been tuning into the latest true crime drama Cleveland Abduction.
The true crime series tells the story of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Georgina ‘Gina’ DeJesus when they were each abducted and held captive by Ariel Castro in the early 2000s.
While the entire story of the three girls’ kidnapping is disturbing, to say the least, viewers found Michelle’s circumstance all the more heartbreaking.
Viewers learned that when Michelle, played by Taryn Manning, was taken in 2002, she was barely searched for before she ended up managing to escape.
Michelle was on her way to court for her son’s child custody case when she was taken by Castro in August 2002 before Amanda was taken in 2003 and Gina in 2004.
The three were held and suffered terrible abuse for a decade before they were rescued, with Netflix’s dramatisation telling most of Michelle’s side of the story.
The synopsis reads: “Abducted and imprisoned, Michelle Knight finds the will to survive amid the most horrific and heartbreaking of circumstances in this true-crime drama.”
After watching, viewers took to social media to share their heartbreak for Michelle and her story.
When each girl went missing, vigils were held for Amanda and Gina with their families filing police reports, but when it came to Michelle, very little was done to investigate her disappearance.
As she was an adult, authorities assumed she had run away during her son’s custody battle which led to her being removed from the National Crime Information Centre database just 15 months after her disappearance.
One person tweeted: “My heart broke for Michelle when I became aware of her story. While the other girls had family, she had no one #ClevelandAbduction.”
Another wrote: “what those poor girls went through at the hands of that monster. Michelle Knight had no family and lost so much precious time with her young son and as a mother that is absolutely heart breaking. Police need to do better.”
A third said: “I am having difficulty watching Cleveland Abduction. I forgot how horrific this story was. What Michelle Knight went through is almost unimaginable. The strength she had to endure such treatment for so long is also unimaginable.”
