Ohio kidnap victim Michelle Knight to be 'adopted' by and live with family of fellow captive Gina DeJesus after refusing to see her mother after release from hospital

Gina DeJesus' family is planning to 'adopt' Michelle Knight and look after her as their daughter after Michelle rejected a meeting with her own mother, a friend of Felix and Nancy DeJesus has revealed to MailOnline.
Lupe Collins, a neighbor who helped the DeJesus family look for Gina since she disappeared in 2004, said Nancy DeJesus told her in a phone call on Thursday that she and her husband are trying to convince Michelle, now 32, to stay with them.
'She was Georgina’s sister for ten years in that house and she’s still her sister now,' Ms Collins said.
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First pictures: Michelle Knight, who is now 32, is pictured as a teenager before her disappearance in 2002. She was finally released from hospital today and is staying with Gina DeJesus

A family friend who talked to Nancy DeJesus said the DeJesus family is taking Michelle Knight in because she says Gina is her only family left in Cleveland

'They’re going to take her in as their own family member and help her.
'Michelle doesn’t want to go back to her own family because they abused her before she was kidnapped and they only want the money now.'
Michelle was released from the hospital on Friday and was taken to Gina's house. 
Ms Collins said the DeJesus family will be able to offer Knight the loving household that she never had even before she was allegedly kidnapped by Ariel Castro.
'They’re a loving family, a giving family. Felix and Nancy will take care of her and make sure she gets the helps she needs,' Ms Collins said.
Two days ago, Gina triumphantly returned to the neighborhood and walked into her home and hundreds of neighbors and well-wishers cheered.

Finally home: Guardian Angels stand in front of Gina DeJesus's family house on May 8 in Cleveland, Ohio as she was expected home

By contrast, Michelle's homecoming had no fanfare. 
Her great aunt Deborah Knight and her brother Freddie told MailOnline today that they had no idea where Knight could stay when she was released from the hospital. 
'I don't know where she'll go,' Ms Knight said from her dilapidated house on Cleveland's West Side. 
However, Freddie Knight, 30, said he saw his sister in the hospital and she wants her family to be reunited.

Concern: Michelle Knight's great-aunt Deborah Knight says that her niece had a child as a result of the junior high sex attack

'I want her out of there and I want her home,' Mr Knight said.
Freddie, Michelle's twin, recalled yesterday his shock at seeing her alive for the first time in more than a decade.

'When I saw her, she was white as a ghost,' Freddie Knight, 32, told The New York Post. 'But she told me, "Come over here and give me a hug. It’s been ages!"

'She was happy to see me. It was emotional. She even recognized me - even though it had been 11 years.'
Speaking to MailOnline, Freddie said last night that he was afraid that his sister would become the 'forgotten kidnap victim' as so much more attention was placed on Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus.
Knight himself, who says he was kicked out of his mother's house 16 years ago when he was just 14, didn't even know his sister was gone until he saw the news on TV.
Michelle is the third and final victim to leave the hospital where she was being treated for the physical and mental abuse she endured over ten years - allegedly at the hands of Ariel Castro, who is accused of routinely beating and raping his three victims.
The hospital said she is in good spirits and grateful for the fund created to aid the victims.
The hospital statement said: 'Michelle Knight is in good spirits and would like the community to know that she is extremely grateful for the outpouring of flowers and gifts.

'She is especially thankful for the Cleveland Courage Fund. She asks that everyone please continue to respect her privacy at this time.'

No contact: Barbara Knight, pictured, has not yet been reunited with her daughter after Michelle refused to see her

Michelle was 21 when she was taken off the street in 2002 and little was made of her disappearance.

Her family told police that she had run away after her young child was taken from her by the Ohio Department of Family Services. 
Action News19 reports that Michelle's mother, Barbara returned to Cleveland this week after she moved to Naples, Florida, but that Michelle refuses to allow her mother to see her.
Barbara has since hired to lawyer to fight for access to her daughter.
Attorney Jay Milano told WKYC: 'Barbara just wants to be a part of the healing process.'
Barbara, who said she filed a missing persons report after Michelle vanished and continued to search for her, said her son have been reunited with Michelle but she has not yet seen her.
'I just wish that my daughter would reach out and let me know that she's there... She's probably angry at the world because she thought she would never be found but thank God that somebody did,' she said.

Great aunt: Deborah Knight, left, says that that three male classmates grabbed Michelle at school about a year before she was abducted and raped her

'I don't want her to think that I forgot about her... Hopefully whatever happened between us, if something did - I hope it heals because I really want to take her back to Florida with me.'
But Barbara said that she knew little about what had happened to Michelle since she last saw her as she has not spoken with detectives, she said.
'There was a detective who called me but he just said it was my daughter,' she said, adding that she missed his call and that he had left work when she called back. 'I didn't get a hold of anyone.'
Ms Collins said Knight, who was the first of the three women to be kidnapped, was abused the most during her 11 years in captivity. 
She requires facial reconstruction surgery to repair the damage of repeated beatings. 
'She's the most broken down physically. He broke other down the most emotionally. And he broke her down the most mentally,’ she said.

Gina, meanwhile, is slowly adjusting to free life.
Nancy DeJesus told Ms Collins that it’s hard to convince her daughter to venture outside. After years locked indoors, with no sunlight, it is difficult for her even to walk in her own back yard.
Ms Collins said Gina ventured outside briefly on Thursday, but ran back inside when she was frightened by a news helicopter overhead.

She flew in from Florida on Tuesday night after learning about her daughter's rescue on the news and claimed she never gave up hope Michelle was still alive.
She said she wanted to bring her back to Naples with her once she was released from hospital.

Michelle was the first of the three victims to be abducted. She was last seen at a cousin's house near West 106th Street and Lorain Avenue in Cleveland in 2002.
But her disappearance did not receive much publicity as she was classed as a runaway and her name was taken off the missing person's database just 15 months later.
Barbara Knight has contended all week that police did not do enough to try and find her daughter.

Troubled: She told Savannah Guthrie some people told her Michelle had wanted nothing to do with her

The police department's policy on investigating missing adults at the time states that an officer must go and see if a missing person has been found, then inform the FBI within two hours so the person can be removed from the National Crime Information Center database.
Kym Pasqualini, a national advocate for missing adults, told The Plain Dealer that the removal of Knight's name and description from the database after only 15 months helped the case fall through the cracks.
However, even after she was removed from the database, police reports show that officers continued to inquire about her whereabouts several times afterwards and successfully verified she was still missing in May 2003 after finally reaching her mother.
It also emerged yesterday that Michelle was gang-raped and impregnated in junior high - a year before she suffered more than ten years of abuse under a kidnapper.

Her great aunt told the New York Daily News on Thursday that three male classmates grabbed Michelle at school and raped her.

Deborah Knight told the paper that if that wasn't enough of a hardship, she later found out that she was pregnant as a result of that attack - and later had a son she named Joey.
The boy was placed in foster care shortly after he was born.
Relatives told the Daily News that Michelle is looking forward to being reunited with her son, now 13, after she leaves the hospital.

It was revealed earlier this week that Michelle is reportedly suffering hearing loss and facial bone damage after years of vicious beatings to her head.
While the stories of missing Cleveland girls Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry, who were also found on Monday, have remained high-profile cases over the last decade, little was known of Michelle.
While family appeals for Gina and Amanda have been frequent and well-publicized over the past ten years, her case appears to have been long forgotten.

Family: Barbara Knight's 10-year-old daughter is seen outside their home in Florida before they leave for Ohio

En route to Ohio: None of the Knight family spoke to reporters before they were driven off at speed in a white car with New York license plates

Michelle was in her early twenties when she was last seen on August 23, 2002, at her cousin's house near West 106th Street and Lorain Avenue.
Mrs Knight said she would often put up fliers around Cleveland's West Side and even after moving away she would return to continue the search on her own as police were little help.
Barbara Knight previously told The Plain Dealer that Michelle vanished shortly after she was scheduled for a court appearance in the custody case of her son.
The mother told the paper that she had become involved with an abusive man whom she thinks injured her toddler grandson, eventually leading Michelle to lose the boy.
Mrs Knight told The Plain Dealer she believes she once saw her daughter walking with an older man at a shopping mall several years ago.
When the woman trailed behind her companion, he would grab her by the arm and pull her along, she said.

High-profile: The missing person cases of Amanda Berry, left, and Gina DeJesus, right, were well-known to people in Cleveland - but the disappearance of Michelle Knight drew little attention

Found: The women were found at this home in Cleveland on Monday after Berry managed to escape

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