Ariel Castro, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus & Michele Knight Kidnapper: Convinced One Victim 'My Family Didn't Care' [VIDEOS]
During the 11 years she was held captive in Ariel Castro's home after he abducted her, Michelle Knight was convinced by her abductor that her family did not care about her disappearance.
Knight, now 32, spoke about her years held in captivity in an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw that aired Tuesday and Wednesday, and previewed on TODAY.
When the 20-year-old went missing in 2002, there was no TV or news coverage about her, and no family members searching door to door for their missing loved one. Knight said her captor used the lack of family presence to abuse her further, telling Knight, "You will die here. Nobody's looking - you won't even be missed when you do die."
Knight told Dr. Phil that when the mother of fellow captive Amanda Berry appeared on TV begging for news of her vanished daughter, Castro would say to Knight, "Where's your family? Why don't you have any? They must not really love you."
She cried as she remembered those days of feeling completely alone.
"It was just extremely painful to have somebody come in your room day after day, telling you, 'Your family don't care about you. You never had a family that loves you. And that's the reason why I hate you, because I can abuse you and nobody would care,'" she told Dr. Phil.
Castro's comments had an effect on her.
"It would hurt because I knew my family didn't care," she said. "And I knew they weren't there for me because they never were. And to see Amanda have her mother, I just wanted her to be my mother. I wanted her to say all those things to me."
Police acknowledged there was little focus on finding Knight because her family believed she had run away after losing her toddler son to protective custody. However, Knight's mother, Barbara Knight, told TODAY on May 8 that it was the investigators who thought Michelle "just left because of the upset" of losing custody.
Barbara told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in May that she had put up fliers for her missing daughter in Cleveland and continued searching on her own even after moving out of Ohio.
Michelle has refused to see Barbara since she was rescued on May 6, 2013, along with fellow captives Berry and Gina DeJesus. She admitted to Dr. Phil that even before she was abducted, her own mother held her captive. She claimed Barbara wanted to keep her daughter uneducated to enable her to collect Supplemental Security income.
"The truth is that three girls were taken, three girls were rescued. Only two girls went home," Dr. Phil told NBC News' Kristen Dahlgren on TODAY Wednesday. "She didn't have a home. It's time this girl got a break."
The whole interview airs on Dr. Phil Wednesday.
Knight also detailed her years spent chained to a bed, starved and often naked. She is the first of the three victims to speak about her ordeal. Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus are collaborating on a book about their ordeals in Castro's home, according to The Associated Press.
Castro, 52, was sentenced to life without parole plus 1,000 years in prison, but was found dead in his cell just a month later.
