Vanessa gay

Gay broke down sobbing, telling McGinty about what happened in Sowell's home and that she had seen a decomposing woman. Months after Sowell was charged, Gay was arrested because she didn't meet with a probation officer after a drug conviction.

I SURVIVED I Felt

Road to recovery began with someone listening. That's what victims need, Gay said. Authorities called Gay and other survivors who testified against Sowell brave and heroic but after the trial, once they had what they needed, there was no support.

Having an addiction doesn't make you less than human. It hurt to see an outpouring of love and support for Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight -- and for Castro's house to be quickly razed and replaced with a garden, while the East Side lot where Sowell's demolished home once stood was still desolate.

Her mistrust of the police gay her reluctant to report her attack for many years. She tried to call for help the day she escaped, only to be coldly told by a dispatcher that she needed to come downtown to file a report. With Vanessa Gay, Latundra Billups, Shawn Morris, Melvette Sockwell.

But eventually, her testimony would put her attacker behind rs:Progressive: Multitask right now. There was no support for my family, for my kids who went through this with us," Gay said. He believed her. Vanessa Gay, one of the three survivors of Anthony Sowell's attacks says she never received justice, even after testifying against him in Unseen: Directed by Laura Paglin.

Inpolice discovered the bodies of eleven women decomposing in and around the home of a known sex offender. The group's facilitator, Melanie GiaMaria, stuck by her through the trial, through the trauma and remains a close friend — in fact, she credits GiaMaria with saving her life.

That's the message Vanessa Gay wants the community to hear today, five years after Anthony Sowell's heinous crimes were discovered. It doesn't make you disposable. With access to the surviving victims, Unseen looks into how the murders of those women went unnoticed for so long.

But the judge, who since retired and now is the county prosecutor, listened. Support dropped off after trial. Sowell's targets, including Gay, all struggled with drug addictions or mental illness. Gay escaped Sowell's Imperial Avenue home in with her life.

She had tried to tell police, who laughed her off. In the jail, as she waited to go to drug treatment, she participated in a counseling group for women who had been sexually assaulted. But that shouldn't be an excuse for the justice system not to be held fully accountable for its failures, which she said vanessa exploited by Sowell.

That lack of support, she said, was only magnified when three women escaped from Ariel Castro's Seymour Avenue home last year.

I SURVIVED I Felt

Vanessa Gay recounts her escape from Anthony Sowell in Cleveland, Ohio. I want the public not to turn their backs. I don't want people to misunderstand, they deserve every kind of help they've gotten," Gay said. That was the beginning of her recovery.

Eleven other women did not. That compels her to speak for them, to defend them so their deaths aren't minimized.