Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of rape or sexual assault that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can find help and discreet resources on the National Sexual Assault Hotline website or by calling 1-800-656-4673.

() This summer marks 18 years for a Cleveland family whose daughter disappeared weeks after her 14th birthday.

The search for Ashley Summer has had federal agents chasing down lookalikes, excavating neighborhoods and seeing the conviction of a close relative for sex crimes against children.

The family, meanwhile, had 48 hours of pure joy when they mistakenly believed Ashley was found alive.

Even after her neighborhood was canvassed, nearby backyards were excavated and her great-uncle was arrested, there has been no sign of Ashley.

Ashley Summers disappears

Her step-grandmother, Linda Summers, said Ashley had started to have a bit of a rebellious teenage phase before moving in with a relative in 2007.

The move was meant to cool down tensions between Ashley and her mother.

“She’d actually taken some money from out of her mom’s drawer, which is actually the rent money,” Summers said. “It’s quite a bit of money, so her and her mom got in an argument.”

A former runaway, Ashley rotated between two relatives’ homes.

That meant that after the 4th of July, it took several days for anyone to realize the teenager was missing.

“By the time they did the grapevine through all the relatives, it took a little while to realize that nobody knew where she was,” Summers said.

They began looking for Ashley. But as fast as the family could put up fliers, someone was taking them down.

Then came a possible nighttime sighting.

“There’s this girl walking towards us, we had reports that she had cut her hair short and dyed it blonde and we thought, I thought it was her. We kind of went back and forth, this is her, is it not her, I don’t think it’s her. I said, ‘Well, let’s turn around and just see,'” Summers said. “By the time we got turned around and down, she had disappeared down an alley. So we kind of lost that girl.”

Cleveland’s house of horrors

The case lost momentum until federal agents tied Ashley’s disappearance to that of some other local girls, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry.

In the spring of 2013, the two young women escaped from their kidnapper and Cleveland’s infamous “house of horrors.”

DeJesus’ cousin, Sylvia Colon, co-founded Cleveland Missing, a support center to help families.

“For me, what stands out is that she had gone missing a few years after Gina had gone missing,” Colon said. “The family had heard that Gina and Amanda had been found, but they also heard there was a third girl, and they really believed it was Ashley. And every time I think about it, it just chokes me up.”‘

The family was disappointed to learn Ashley hadn’t been located.

A false sighting of Ashley Summers

In a 2015 interview with Fox 8 Cleveland, Ashley’s mother was appreciative of FBI efforts to spread details about Ashley’s tattoo.

The renewed attention led to a photo of a woman with a strong resemblance to Ashley who was wanted for questioning in an identity theft case in Rhode Island.

“If you look at Ashley Summers’ age-progressed photo and even her last photo that we have, there’s a striking resemblance to the ATM photo,” said FBI agent Vicki Anderson.

For Ashley’s family, the picture meant hope, the strongest lead they had been given.

But after it was proven not to be Ashley, the case took an even darker turn.

Ashley Summers’ great-uncle arrested

Kevin Donathan, Ashley’s great-uncle, pleaded guilty to rape of a child and other sexual crimes against minors.

Donathan is also the family member who Ashley was staying with when she disappeared.

“I do know that he’s not off the list of suspects,” Summers said.

Donathan is now serving a 35-year sentence in prison.

“Just knowing the details of the case and the fact that it was minors that he molested and, you know, where your mind takes you, like did he do that to Ashley?” Summers said.

Ashley Summers’ family holds on to hope

It leaves Ashley’s family aching for the ending that came for three brave women and their loved ones after the “house of horrors” was discovered.

Painstaking ground searches conducted by the FBI and Cleveland police in 2021 turned up animal bones, but nothing else was shared with the public.

Donathan spoke exclusively to from his prison cell in Ohio, for the time publicly denying that he had any involvement in Ashley’s disappearance. He pointed fingers at a different relative.

“We know what nine long years is like, and they’ve gone through it even longer now. The hope, the helplessness, the hopelessness and the despair and not knowing,” Colon said. “Ashley is now in her 30s. She went missing when she was 14 years old. That’s a lot of years.”

Still, Ashley’s family clings to hope.

“Any time you see those stories where people are found years later, it gives you hope,” Summers said.