May 23rd, 2014
09:47 AM ET

Stop Doubting California Woman on Kidnapping, Michelle Knight Says

Stop judging the California woman who walked away from her alleged captor after a decade, an angry and emotional Michelle Knight told CNN's "New Day" Friday.

"Unless you were walking in her shoes, you have no reason to talk, none at all," said Knight, one of three women freed from years of brutal captivity in a Cleveland home in 2013.

Knight was referring to the case of a California woman who approached police after contacting her sister on Facebook, saying she had been abducted by her mother's boyfriend at 15, then raped, beaten and forced to marry her captor.

In the days since the woman's story came to light, some neighbors in the Bell Gardens neighborhood where she lived with the man and their 3-year-old child have questioned the abduction story, saying she appeared to be happy and well cared for.

"She never showed a sad face or worried face," said a neighbor who identified herself only as Erika.

"She had plenty of time to actually escape so it's hard to believe this is really going on because she had a lot of free time."

Knight has just one answer to those doubting the woman's story: You couldn't possibly understand.

"Just because you're not chained up and you're not locked in the basement doesn't mean you ain't trapped," she told CNN's Kate Bolduan. "I know exactly what it feels like to be trapped in your own mind, your emotional mind, and told you can't do anything about it, nobody will care about what you say."

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