Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight still deserve privacy

That is what courage looks like.

Amanda, Gina and Michelle have their power back.

You can see it in their eyes.

You can hear it in their words.

You can feel it in your own heart as you hear Amanda Berry say, “It has been a blessing to have such an outpouring of love and kindness.”

There’s a quiet serenity in Gina DeJesus when she says, “Thank you for the support.” There’s a sea of strength in Michelle Knight as she tells us, “I’m doing just fine.”

For years, we saw the “before” pictures, the girls they once were. Now we see the “after” pictures, the women they have become. They are no longer victims. They are three healthy, beautiful, vibrant women.

The three women were held hostage by a sexual predator in a house on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland for a decade. They look victorious in their video statements released on Tuesday.

“I may have been through hell and back, but I am strong enough to walk through hell with a smile on my face and with my head held high and with my feet firmly on the ground,” Michelle said. “I will not let the situation define who I am. I will define the situation.”

I don’t know about you, but I just wanted to yell, “You go, girl!”

Their message was simple yet profound.

Michelle is 32. She disappeared when she was 21 in 2002.

Amanda is 27. She vanished the day before her 17th birthday in 2003 on her way home from work.

Gina is 23. She went missing on her way home from school at age 14 back in 2004.

They are no longer victims. They are so much more than survivors. They are on their way to becoming warriors, and we can help them.

For so long the only glimpse we had of them was from the posters that hung on utility poles begging for their return, posters that faded away as the days turned into a decade.

I cried watching Amanda speak. She’s even more beautiful than her mom described all those years ago in her living room. If only Louwana had lived to see her daughter free. I hope Amanda felt her mom’s presence and power all those years while Louwana fought and prayed for her daughter’s safety.

It was Amanda who broke through the door on Seymour Avenue in May, with the help of neighbors who heard her shouts for help

There are a million questions to ask. What happened? How did they survive? How did they hang on to hope after all those years? What does freedom taste like? How is Amanda’s little girl doing? What would they say to the man who abused them? What do they want to happen to him?

Ariel Castro has been charged with 329 counts, including kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder. We’ve heard snippets that would make horror writer Stephen King cringe. Cruel punishments for escape attempts. Duct tape and chains. Starving the women. Endless rapes and beatings.

It’s hard to watch Castro’s court appearances. The man accused of yielding such cruel power looks small, weak and sad. He holds his head down, either in genuine shame or to pretend he’s the victim. Either way, every time I see that curly head staring at the floor, I want to scream at the judge to order Castro to lift his head, look the judge in the eye and have respect for the criminal justice system.

If Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo can order Castro to look up, he should.

And if the prosecutor can stop a trial from happening, he should.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty has a huge decision to make.

We have a new prosecutor, one who can and should do the most powerful thing possible: plea bargain on behalf of these three women. Save them from further horror. Use the death penalty as a bargaining chip. Offer to drop it to get Castro to plead guilty to all other charges and accept life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Don’t drag these women through hell.

They have already been there.

As much as a person who beat and starved a woman into having a miscarriage deserves to die, making this a death penalty case will keep it in the courts for decades. The women will be forced to endure a lifetime of appeals.

Is there really a need for a trial? Castro’s attorneys have already said Castro is willing to plead guilty to many of the charges. What do we gain from a trial? The community doesn’t need it. I can’t imagine that the women want it. They shouldn’t have to sit on the witness stand for hours recounting every graphic detail then be cross-examined about it.

What they want is to rebuild their lives.

Kudos to Cleveland for helping them do that. You prayed for these women for a decade. You donated more than a million dollars in two months to the Cleveland Courage Fund. You preserved their privacy.

Let’s keep it up.

Now that the women have gone public, now that everyone knows what they look like today, let’s allow them to walk free among us. Let them go to the movies, the mall, the park, to church without taking photos or asking questions. Let them have the power of their privacy.

The whole world got to see our three warriors this week.

Amanda, Gina and Michelle finally have their freedom. Let’s help them preserve it. Let’s leave them alone to live their new lives

Editor’s note: Regina Brett had voluntarily stopped writing about these three women because her husband, Bruce Hennes, a partner at Hennes Paynter Communications, is working for free with the Jones Day law firm to help the women preserve their privacy. With the release of the video, Plain Dealer Editor Debra Adams Simmons said there was no longer a conflict for Brett.

Join Regina Brett at 3 p.m. Saturdays on WKSU FM/89.7 for “The Regina Brett Show” or online at www.reginabrettshow.org. This week: Summer reading suggestions. Guests include GoodReads Features Editor Jessica Donagh; Dave Ferrante from Visible Voice Books, Suzanne DeGaetano from Mac’s BacksBooks on Coventry and Bob Ethington from Akron-Summit County Public Library.