Michelle Knight, one of the 3 women held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade, was released from the hospital Friday.
But Knight has suffered such severe injuries that she may need facial reconstruction surgery, her grandmother, Deborah Knight, told CBS news.
"When she was severely beaten, he beat her so badly in the face that she has to have facial reconstruction and she's lost hearing in one ear," she told CBS.
Knight told police that her alleged captor, Ariel Castro, repeatedly raped her and caused her to miscarry at least 5 times over the years she spent trapped in his home by starving her and punching her in the abdomen, Reuters reported.
"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," the Metro Health hospital wrote on its Facebook page earlier Friday, along with an appeal to respect Knight's privacy.
It was unclear Saturday whether Knight had met with her family. CBS reported that Knight had a brief meeting with her mother, Barbara Knight, on Wednesday, citing an unnamed relative, while an unnamed family spokesperson told CNN that Knight had still not yet spoken with her mother.
According to ABC local affiliate News Net 5, Barbara Knight was not permitted to see Michelle because her daughter was not accepting visitors and was not informed when she left the hospital.
“Barbara Knight is a mother whose daughter has lived through hell. The actual hell. Worse than we can imagine. It was hell for her, too. She came up to be with her daughter, to hug her, to help her heal. She’s been stonewalled down the line. I don’t know why and I know it’s abhorrent,” Barbara Knight's attorney Jay Milano told the TV station.
The other women who were freed from Castro's house, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, as well as Berry's 6-year-old daughter who was born in captivity, left the hospital earlier this week.
Knight was 20 when she disappeared in August 2002. Amanda Berry went missing at age 16 in 2003 and Gina DeJesus went missing at age 14 in 2004.
All 3 victims told police they were kidnapped after accepting a ride in Castro's car in the same area of Cleveland.
Public campaigns to find Berry and DeJesus were conducted after their disappearances, but Knight's case received less attention; some relatives thought she had run away, according to Reuters. She was removed from the FBI's missing persons database after 15 months because they couldn't get in touch with her family to verify she was still missing, a city spokesperson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
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