I think the city of Cleveland has a lot of explaining to do about the successful imprisonment of three women in the same house for ten years. That is bizarre.
I wonder if Ms. Berry knew her mother had died. I can't imagine she didn't knowing the cruelty of her jailer. I also find it more than a coincidence Ms. Berry's child is six years old. She would have conceived the child about the time her mother died. I think that is odd considering the graphic brutality surrounding other pregnancies.
05:00 PM - May 8, 2013
Needless to say, (click here) the kidnapping case in Cleveland has garnered a ton of media attention now that the three women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michele Knight — have been recovered from the house in which they were kept prisoner for a decade. But before it became a national story, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett was on the case. Brett, a columnist since 1994 who’s been at the Plain Dealer since 2000, spoke with Berry’s mother, Louwana Miller, several times in the years between Berry’s April 2003 disappearance and Miller’s 2006 death. She tells CJR what covering the case for the past decade has been like and how she feels now that it’s solved — years too late for Miller.......It wasn’t your typical weepy, sad mom. She wanted to kill somebody for her daughter being missing. And I think the media didn’t know what to do with somebody like Louwana because she didn’t fit the stereotype. And so I think, in some ways, Amanda didn’t show up on the radar screen for people right away....
There is a reason why these missing women were neglected by Cleveland. There is a discriminating judgement of the community. It took a female journalist dedicated to finding a missing women to at least attempt to bring an effort. Amanda was missing, there was no evidence she was dead. Everything pointed to an abducted woman. It just seems to so obvious to me that three missing women from the same area were among boarded up houses. In some ways, this case is a no-brainer.
Castro succeeded because the system failed. The first thing Ms. Berry said was, "I am Amanda Berry, they have been looking for me, I am free now, here I am." She knew. She knew that for three years while her mother was alive there was attention to her plight. She fully expected the 911 operator to realize who she was. She had a clear understanding she had an important place in a larger social picture of her plight. Her mother was responsible for that importance. I just think Cleveland could not move outside their own 'legal prejudice' to think outside the box. And if detectives and police did think outside the box, why and what stopped them?
Ms. Berry's mother knew by having a female journalist continue to bring focus to her daughter would bring about discovery. She was correct. Louwana Miller was correct. Gina's family stated, "We knew it." Cleveland didn't try hard enough to move past 'the stuff' that prevented their discovery in a community that knew the women were alive.
