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Amanda Berry, left, and Gina DeJesus finally got the high school graduation day that Ariel Castro stole from them. On Wednesday, May 27, they were given honorary diplomas from John Marshall High School, the school Amanda attended when Castro kidnapped her, and Gina would have attended when she entered high school.

(James Wooley)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When Ariel Castro kidnapped Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, he stole 10 years from them, along with everything that matters in life. He took their freedom, their families, their time to be young and their time to plan and begin their lives as adults.

He cheated them out of the major life events most of us take for granted.

One of them was their high school graduations.

They got that back Wednesday when they put on white caps and gowns and received honorary diplomas from John Marshall High School, the Cleveland public school Amanda attended when Castro abducted her on April 21, 2003. It was the day before her 17th birthday.

Amanda Berry with John Marshall High School principal Tiffany James and her honorary high school diploma.

"It was awesome," Amanda said not long after the ceremony. "I always wanted to grow up and be somebody and do something with my life, you know? I always planned to graduate, and my mom always wanted that for me, to see me cross the stage. So this means everything to me."

Gina was 14 and in middle school when Castro abducted her a year later, on April 2, 2004, but she would have attended John Marshall.

They joined the John Marshall Class of 2015 in its graduation ceremony at the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University.

School and education had a special importance in Amanda's life. Before she vanished into Castro's nightmarish world of continual abuse and deprivation, she planned to be the first in her family to go to college.

"After I graduate from college I am going to earn enough money to buy my own house," she wrote in a journal-like entry, dated the morning of the day she was kidnapped, in the opening chapter of "Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland."

Gina DeJesus with John Marshall High School principal Tiffany James, who gave her an honorary diploma on Wednesday.

The book, co-authored by Gina and journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, was published last month and went immediately to the New York Times best-seller list, where it remains.

Amanda also made education a priority for her daughter, Jocelyn, who was born in the house on Christmas Day in 2006.

In the fall of 2011, when Jocelyn was almost five years old, Amanda set up a makeshift classroom in the locked and boarded-up bedroom they shared. "It's time for kindergarten," she wrote.

She knew it was time, she went on, because Castro worked during most of her captivity as a school-bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. His first day back at work meant it was Jocelyn's first day of school.

"Now it's time to make [Jocelyn's] learning more formal," she wrote.

At the end of that home-schooled year, on June 2, 2012, Amanda organized a kindergarten graduation ceremony for her daughter.

"I made her a black graduation hat out of construction paper and a 'certificate of graduation' that was very formal and fancy. Where it said 'teacher,' I signed my name."

They gathered in the bedroom/classroom for the ceremony. "I ask Jocelyn to stand up, and I read the certificate out loud: 'This is to verify that Jocelyn Jade Berry has graduated from kindergarten.'

"She stands up wearing her hat and steps forward to get her certificate. We all applaud, and she says, 'Thank you.' I'm so proud of her."

Today, Amanda and Gina got to wear their hats, step forward and get their certificates.

All of Cleveland applauds.