Sweet Freedom In Cleveland

Nothing requires as much courage as never giving up.

Amanda Berry, 27, of Cleveland, Ohio, never gave up. That’s a family trait. Her family members never gave up looking for their girl. Neither did the families of Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

Any of us may or may not rise to a challenge that suddenly springs upon us.

That’s one thing. Enduring 10 years as an innocent prisoner is another. Tied or chained all day. Forced to never leave a house, or at least the yard at night.

Raped, impregnated and beaten. Forced to deliver your enslaver’s baby in an empty plastic kiddie pool.

And still keeping alive the will to be free.

So many people are broken by so much less.

Berry wasn’t. At great risk to her life she found her chance. She made it out, with the help of a neighbor she’d never met.

I am, of course, writing about the bizarre case of three young girls who were kidnapped 10 years ago and kept in a house by a madman. Then, one day, he left an inside door unlocked while he went to pick up fast food. Police believe it may have been the only chance any of the women ever got to escape.

Berry got to an outside door, forced it ajar and screamed for her life. What would have happened to her if her captor had come back and foiled her attempt can scarcely be imagined by decent people.

Cynics might say she just had the courage of desperation. Oh, really?

How many people facing much less abuse and intimidation still won’t walk through an unlocked door and just leave?

I don’t know details of the escape. There’s not much about this depraved ordeal I want to know.

Berry may have stood on the shoulders of her fellow prisoners to escape. Or the unlocked inside door may only have been to the room she was in. For all I know, DeJesus and Knight pushed her out.

One thing I do know: A person who was tortured and beaten for 10 years bolted hard the fi rst chance she got, crawled out through a hole kicked through the bottom of the door by a neighbor she’d never met and immediately called 911. She was alarmed and emotional in that 911 recording, but to my ear was less gripped by panic than some people I’ve heard about on the police scanner reporting a pet cat up a tree.

Amanda Berry has guts.

As someone in the newsroom put it, if you go to make sure the door’s still locked every day for 10 years, that’s 3,652 times.

It takes grit to do that the 3,653rd time.

I have to wonder if being a mother played a part. Berry’s daughter,born in that kiddie pool, is now 6 years old. Berry could see the life her child would inherit, and how likely it was to be short.

It’s one thing to have your freedom taken from you.

It’s another to watch your child grow in that captivity, knowing the same thing will happen to her.

Neighbor Charles Ramsey, who says he freed Berry, insists he’s not a hero. I respectfully disagree, assuming his story checks out. There was a challenge. Itsuddenly sprang upon him. He rose to it. That fits every defi nition of hero I ever heard of.

Argue that any decent person would have done what he did. How many of us would have looked at Berry, thought she was crazy, called the police and backed off? Too many.

Ramsey called the police - then he didn’t back off. The 911 call recording shows he didn’t know who was in the house or if anyone was coming back. Then Ramsey, byhis account, helped Berry break out. If Ramsey had just called police and waited in safety, the madman would have had time to get back from the burger joint. For all we know, he would have killed those women if the police had arrived and insisted on coming in.

Now police are being second-guessed, with critics saying there were signs, reports of strange behavior at the house over the years.

Folks, reports of weird behavior get called in topolice every day. Anybody who thinks the calls in the news accounts were strange needs to sit in earshot of a police scanner for a day.

The reports will have to be a whole lot worse and more persistent than I’ve heard in news accounts so far for me to believe the police badly missed an opportunity here.

Never, never, never, never give up. That’s the lesson.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.