Ariel Castro victim Michelle Knight describes exactly how he lured her into captivity

Kidnapping victim Michelle Knight endured unthinkable horrors during her 11 years in captivity in the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro, and after undergoing facial reconstructive surgery, she’s now sharing her plight. Unfortunately her life was already full of unspeakable pain before she was abducted, and in her memoir Finding Me, the 33 year old hopes to bring hope to others, and to help herself get over the pain. She’s also gotten two tattoos, a dragon and “Living life til death do us part,” and changed her name to Lily, her favorite flower.

Michelle was 21 years old when she was kidnapped. She was a mother who had her son taken from her and put into foster care, which she blames on her mother’s boyfriend. “My mother’s boyfriend came home one day high and drunk and just decided to take out his frustrations on my son. How did he do it? He twisted my son’s leg, and I heard it crack,” she told Dr. Phil last fall. “And then they tried to say I didn’t protect him, but I did. I did all I could do.” In her memoir, Knight says that she initially lied to the authorities and told them her son had fallen, and that’s what caused his broken knee. He had been taken from her for two months when she was abducted. She was trying to make an appointment with a social worker, but she couldn’t locate the address, so she stopped into a Family Dollar to ask for help. It was there that her friend Emily’s father Ariel Castro offered to help. “His hands were rusty, like he hadn’t lotioned them in months, and the skin was peeling. his pot belly spilled out over the top of his black jeans,” she writes in Finding Me. Castro offered her a ride, and because she knew his daughter, she accepted it.

He held her arm too tightly while they walked to the car, and then apologized for the grip. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,” he told her. On the way to the appointment he told her he needed to stop at his house, and he invited her in for a minute. “It smelled like a mix of p!ss, beer and rotten black beans,” Michelle said of his house. She was thinking about how to get out of the house as soon as possible, when he pointed to under a dresser, where he said his puppies were sleeping. When she looked down, he slammed the door shut, put his hand over her mouth and nose, and told her he’s kill her if she screamed.

Michelle was already estranged from her family when she went missing, so they did not look for her. Ariel, who watched the television avidly looking for mentions of his abductions, often taunted Michelle about how her family didn’t seem to care that she was gone. When she was finally released from captivity and sent to the hospital she sent her mother away after a tense confrontation. Over a year later, she still wishes to keep her distance from her family, telling People that she “doesn’t think it’s possible to see my mother. Maybe my brothers someday.”

She has still not been reunited with her son, and may never be, but she’s still making peace with building a whole new life. She hopes to someday open a restaurant. In the meantime, she’s just enjoying a life of freedom. “I’m still trying to figure out where I go from here,” she writes. “But the horrors I survived don’t have to define me. One day at a time, one breath at a time, I am choosing to move forward. After crawling my way out of a dark bedroom into a brand new life, that’s the best gift I can gift myself.”