Past Event

The disappearance and rescue of Amanda Berry

Rachel Caidor, Assistant Director, Campus Advocacy Network at UIC, and Claudia Garcia-Rojas, Editor of “Reporting on Rape and Sexual Violence: A Media Toolkit” will be joining us as our guest speakers.

From New Yorker:  “What Charles Ramsey and Amanda Berry Knew” by Amy Davidson

“‘So, you know, I figured it was a domestic-violence dispute,’ Charles Ramsey told a reporter for the ABC affiliate in Cleveland, explaining what happened after, as he put it, he ‘heard screaming. I’m eating McDonald’s. I see this girl going nuts trying to get out of the house.’ Ramsey, and others who gathered, helped her break open the door, kicking it from the bottom. She told them her name, Amanda Berry. She had been kidnapped at the age of seventeen, ten years ago…For Berry and the others to be rescued, in other words, two things had to happen: she had to never forget who she was, and that who she was mattered; and Ramsey needed to not care who she might be at all—to think that all that mattered was that a woman was trapped behind a door that wouldn’t open, and to walk onto the porch..”

Questions for Consideration 

What does this horrific case tell us about violence against women in our own backyard? What was your take on the media coverage of Charles Ramsey, in what ways was was media coverage racialized or sensationalized?

Want to learn more?

Note: the entrance is located off of Racine, where there is a parking lot next to the building.

Free and open to the public. For more information please call 312.422.5580.

If you need a sign interpreter or require other arrangements to fully participate, please call 312.422.5580. For parking locations near the facility, please visit ChicagoParkingMap.com.