Three women who were kidnapped and repeatedly raped and tortured in a filthy dungeon for more than nine years have relived their hellish ordeal.

Amanda Berry, now 33, Gina DeJesus, 29, and Michelle Knight, 38, were held captive by twisted Ariel Castro after they were snatched off the street in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio.

Castro chained and starved the women, gave them a bucket to use as a toilet, and repeatedly raped them in his house of horrors while their families and friends feared they were dead.

Ms Berry gave birth to a daughter in captivity after being raped by the monster, who would later kill himself after being jailed for life.

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In a new interview seven years after their miraculous escape, the survivors have revealed chilling and terrifying details of life inside the dungeon.

Ms Knight, who was held the longest, was 21 when she was abducted as she left her cousin's house in August 2002.

Ms Berry was walking home from work when she was kidnapped a day before her 17th birthday in April 2003.

In April 2004, Castro snatched Ms DeJesus, then 14, as she walked home and took her to his home, where he locked her up with the others.

Ms Berry and Ms DeJesus knew Castro, a bus driver for primary schoolchildren, as the father of their school friend Arlene.

In the new interview, Ms Berry told ABC's 20/20 programme that she accepted a ride from Castro, but when he took her to his home – after asking her if she wanted to hang out with his daughter – she knew she was in trouble.

She said: "He took me to the next bedroom, and it was just really dark in there, and he didn’t turn on the lights, and there was … a little room off of the bigger bedroom, kind of a big closet.

"And he took me in there, and he told me to pull down my pants. And from there I knew, like, this was not going to be good."

She added: "I just started screaming and crying… 'somebody please help me'.

"And nobody, nobody came. I was so scared that I was going to die. I didn’t think that I was going to ever make it home."

Days later, Castro used her mobile phone to call her worried family and taunt them. The FBI traced the calls, but was unable to pinpoint the precise location.

Ms Berry's sister, Beth Serrano, revealed: "He called and said, 'I have Mandy', which, nobody called her Mandy but [people] who knew her."

Ms Berry became pregnant after being raped by Castro when she was 20. She gave birth to her daughter, Jocelyn, on Christmas in 2006.

Life changed, she said, following the birth of her daughter.

Castro removed her chains after her daughter noticed them, but he ordered Ms Berry to tell the child that they were bracelets.

Ms Berry said: "This is his kid, you know. How do I feel about that? And she resembled him a lot, and I would look at her, and I just felt, like, she’s mine. She’s mine.

"It was fun because I can get away from the situation. When I was playing with Jocelyn, Jocelyn made me forget everything."

She tried to record the number of times she was raped by using a code in her diary.

The women finally escaped in May 2013 when Berry managed to flee the home with her daughter, then aged six, while Castro was out. She went to a neighbour's house and pleaded with them to call 911.

Castro, for the first time in a decade, had left her bedroom door unlocked when he left.

Ms Berry said: "Jocelyn goes downstairs and then she runs back up, and she says, ‘I don’t find Daddy. Daddy’s nowhere around.

"My heart immediately started pounding. I’m like, 'Should I chance it? If I’m going to do it, I need to do it now'."

Ms Berry and Jocelyn made it through the front door, which was rigged with an alarm, but were unable to open the padlocked storm door.

They were saved when a witness heard the commotion and kicked the door open.

Police were stunned when they found the women and realised they had been held captive for years.

Recalling the moment Castro took her to his home, Ms DeJesus told 20/20: "He was fixing his eyebrows and trimming his moustache and cutting his nose hairs.

"He starts to touch me and stuff, and then I’m like, 'What are you doing? You could go to jail'.

"He just switches up like, 'Well, OK, we’re going to, you’re going to go home now'. He said, 'But you can’t go through the same door you came in'."

Nobody heard her screams as he took her to the basement and chained her up.

She added: "He, would take my hair and put it in his mouth. I don’t know why he did it but it was gross."

Ms DeJesus said Castro would watch their every move. She didn't think it was real when she was finally free.

She said: "When I was telling [first responders] my name, they looked like they’d seen a ghost or something. Like their face completely dropped."

She added: "I thought maybe they were people in costumes because I was shocked."

In August 2013, Castro admitted more than 900 counts of kidnap and rape.

Just weeks later, the 53-year-old was found dead in his prison cell after taking his own life.

The house of horrors where the women were held captive has been torn down.

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