Elisabeth’s ordeal at the hands of her father finally came to an end on 19 April 2008. Twenty-four years earlier, just after her 18th birthday, she had been lured into a soundproofed dungeon beneath the family home in the Austrian town of Amstetten, when Fritzl said he needed help carrying a door. After telling his own wife that Elisabeth had run away to join a cult, Fritzl subjected his daughter to daily assaults, fathering seven children. Elisabeth’s first words to police when she was freed were, “No one will believe me.” But they did, and her monstrous father was arrested. A police officer who first interviewed Elisabeth described her as a “nice woman with grey hair and a sort of blank expression, like wax.” Now in her fifties, she was given a new identity – protected under Austrian law – and lives in a tiny hamlet in the countryside, with her six surviving children. She found happiness after falling in love with Thomas Wagner, the bodyguard assigned to look after her, who is 23 years her junior. According to a local restaurant owner, the family are “polite, happy and smile a lot”, which is a world away from the unthinkable existence they endured for so long.

Californian Jaycee was imprisoned for almost two decades after being abducted in 1991, aged 11, while walking to a school bus stop. She was approached by a car and thought the man wanted directions. Instead, she was shot with 
a stun gun and driven three hours from Lake Tahoe, California, to the home of convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy, in Antioch. When she was 14, Jaycee gave birth to her captor’s child – a girl called Angel – in her backyard prison. “It was very painful, but she came out and she was beautiful,” she told ABC News. “I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.” Her second daughter was born three years later. During her years in captivity, Jaycee hid small scraps of paper to write down her thoughts and feelings, including a list called “My Dreams For The Future”. “See Mom” was the first note she made, and it was dated 28 March 2006, three years before she was freed from her squalid prison. She had accompanied her captor to a parole office, and police were called after officers became suspicious. Jaycee initially denied there was anything wrong, but when pressed, confessed her true identity. It was later believed she may have had Stockholm Syndrome. Since she and her daughters were freed, Jaycee has taken control of her life. She’s shared her story in two books, with the message, “You can survive and be OK.” Now 43, Jaycee lives in California and dedicates her life to helping others. She set up a foundation after receiving a $20m settlement from the state, for parole agents’ repeated failures to find her. “You don’t think you can get through that thing,” she said. “But if you make a choice that you want to be OK, you can be.”

Kidnapped from her bedroom in June 2002 by religious fanatic Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee, Elizabeth – who was 14 years old – spent nine months in captivity and was drugged, raped, and subjected to religious rituals. Taken in the middle of the night by Mitchell, who pressed a knife to her throat, she was dragged out of the house and up into the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah.  She was rescued in March 2003, by police officers on a street 18 miles from her home, after witnesses recognised her abductors from an America’s Most Wanted episode. Elizabeth, now 36, has since become an activist and author. She launched the Elizabeth Smart Foundation in 2011, which helps stop children being exploited, and became a missing persons commentator for ABC News. In 2012, she married Matthew Gilmour and the couple have three children.  In 2017, on the 15th anniversary of her abduction, Lifetime aired the made-for-television film I Am Elizabeth Smart, narrated and produced by Elizabeth, which told the story of her kidnapping from her perspective. She has also written three books about her experience. “To some people, I probably always will be that girl who was kidnapped,” Elizabeth has said. “But when I look in the mirror, I see a mother and a wife, and someone I am proud to be. I see an advocate – I see a survivor.”

The Ariel Castro kidnappings took place between 2002-2004 when three young women – Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Georgina “Gina” DeJesus – were snatched by former school bus driver Castro and held captive in his Cleveland home. Michelle was 21 when she was taken in 2002 – the first of his victims – Amanda was 16 when she was abducted in April 2003, and Gina was 14 when she was taken a year later. The girls were chained up and raped for the next decade, and Amanda had one child who survived. The three girls escaped the “House of Horrors” in May 2013, when Castro left the inner front door of his house unlocked, and Amanda screamed for help. A neighbour heard her and called 911.
Now 42, Michelle – who married partner Miguel three years after her release and now goes by the name of Lillian Rose – refuses to be broken and says she no longer has nightmares about Castro, who hanged himself in prison. “I have found joy in my life,” she says. Now 37, Amanda hosts a daily news segment on American TV about missing persons, and Gina DeJesus is now 33, and works with search and rescue teams. “I want to bring the missing back home, where they belong,” she said. All three still occasionally see each other, but they don’t dwell on the past. “We laugh,” said Michelle. “Silly stuff.” 

Belgian Sabine’s account of her abduction on 28 May 1996 and its aftermath are documented in her 
2005 memoir, I Choose To Live, which became a number one bestseller. Aged 12, Sabine was one of the last two victims of serial killer Marc Dutroux. She was snatched off the street as she rode her bicycle to school, and along with fellow captive Laetitia Delhez, 14, she survived – though the bodies of four other victims and Dutroux’s accomplice were found on the property. Dutroux, dubbed “The Monster of Belgium”, kept her chained up in his cramped, filthy cellar in the Belgian town of Marcinelle for 87 days. Belgian police rescued Sabine and Laetitia after witnesses to Laetitia’s kidnap noted down his car registration plate and informed the authorities. Sabine, now 40, is adamant the ordeal is behind her, saying in an interview, “I didn’t ask for any of this, but I’ve dealt with it all fairly well. In his cellar, I knew what was important for me was to see my family again. So, I didn’t give up, I kept going.” She refuses to be seen as a victim and after her release, she got back on her bike and set off for school again, alone. She said, “You can’t spend the rest of your life crying, you can’t live in the past.”