Two of the three woman who were freed on May, 2013 after spending over 10 years inside a Cleveland, Ohio house, were paid homage and honored on Tuesday in Washington, on the first anniversary since they managed to escape.
Gina de Jesus and Amanda Berry spoke on the power of hope and how important it was for them before they could escape from a Cleveland house where their kidnapper, Ariel Castro, kept them for over a decade.
"If I could say one thing it would be this: Never lose hope, because miracles do happen," said a moved Amanda Berry minuted before accepting a special acknowledgement from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in their annual awards to hope, celebrated on Tuesday night in Washington, reported The Daily News.
The annual awards have the intention of remembering missing children and acknowledge the people who help the world be a safer place for children, according to The Plain Dealer.
The same source highlighted that Castro's third victim, Michelle Knight, was not present in the ceremony because the Center focuses on missing children and teenagers, while Knight went missing when she was 21, in 2002.
On Wednesday, Knight released her book "Finding Me", and in recent statements she assured she had forgiven Castro for the time he kept her kidnapped, according to Los Angeles Times.
In August, 2013, 53 year old Ariel Castro, the so called "Cleveland Kidnapper", who plead guilty to raping and kidnapping three Cleveland, Ohio women for over a decade, was sentenced to life in prison plus another 1,000 years without the possibility of parole.
Castro, of Puerto Rican origins, faced almost a thousand charges, among which are two for homicide for hitting one of the women until she had an abortion. However, last September, Ariel Castro committed suicide in his cell in Cleveland.
The house where the three women were kept for a decade was demolished last year.
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