Ariel Castro is Sentenced for Cleveland Abductions...Life Plus a thousand years

Ariel Castro: "I'm not a monster, I'm a normal person, I am just sick, I have an addiction

One of three women held in an Ohio home for about a decade has told their captor he will "face hell for eternity", as he was jailed for life. Michelle Knight, 32, wept as she delivered her victim impact statement before Ariel Castro.

The 53-year-old former school bus driver, who was imprisoned for life without parole plus 1,000 years, told the court he was not a monster.  The court heard he kept his victims chained up and repeatedly raped them. The captives, Ms Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, were rescued in May after one of them escaped from the Cleveland home.

Passing sentence on Thursday, Judge Michael Russo told Castro there was no place in the world for people who enslave others. The outcome of the sentencing hearing was never in doubt after Castro accepted a plea deal last week that spared him the death penalty but meant he would die in prison, serving life without any chance of parole.

Still, there was an air of unreality in the courtroom as Castro tried to explain what he’d done. He apologized for his actions, but in a rambling, disjointed, defiant statement also tried to defend himself. "I believe I am addicted to porn to the point that it really makes me impulsive and I just don't realize what I'm doing is wrong," he said.

The former bandsman continued: "To be a musician and to be a monster like you're trying to say that I am - I don't think I can handle that - I'm a happy person inside."
He told the court that he had been "driven by sex", adding: "I'm not a violent predator… I'm not a monster, I'm a normal person. I'm just sick. I have an addiction, just like an alcoholic has an addiction."

He said he never planned to abduct the women, but acted on the spur of the moment when he kidnapped his first victim. Castro also turned to their families and to Ms Knight to say he was "truly sorry".
“I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me,” he said later. At one point, Castro said the abuse was consensual sex. “We had a lot of harmony that went on in that home,” Castro said.
 

“I’m not sure there’s anyone in America that would agree with you,” Russo said.

He handed down the maximum sentences to Castro for the “merciless manner” in which he tortured the women.

“You may think you are the victim,” Russo said. “But you are not a victim; you are a victimizer.”

 

In her statement, Ms Knight told how their captor went to church every Sunday, before coming home to "torture" the women. "I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning," she said. "You will face hell for eternity.
"From this moment on, I will not let you define me, or affect who I am. I will live on, you will die a little every day."  She was the only victim to speak at the hearing.

"My name is Michelle Knight and I would like to tell you what 11 years was like for me"

 

Michelle Knight explained how Castro went to church each Sunday, than came home and tortured the women

 

Much of Thursday’s hearing was devoted to law enforcement officials describing the horrific scene at Castro’s Seymour Ave. house.  New, even more graphic details of the imprisonment that shocked the nation were revealed. Based on diary entries, officers told of how the women were chained to poles in the basement, or to a bedroom heater, or kept at bay in a van. One woman was forced to wear a motorcycle helmet while chained in the basement and, after she tried to escape, had a vacuum cord wrapped around her neck, officials said.

 

The hearing earlier heard testimony from policewoman Barbara Johnson, one of the officers who found the women. She said that as she and another officer searched the darkened house, she shone a flashlight on herself so the women could see they were really police.  Ms  Knight "literally launched herself" into another officer's arms, Ms Johnson said.
"And she just kept repeating, 'you saved us, you saved us,'" the policewoman told the court. But Ms DeJesus was initially too afraid to leave her room, she added.

Special Agent Andrew Burke testified that Castro would sometimes give his victims money after raping them. Then he would require them to pay him back if they wanted items from a store. He said the home's bedroom windows had been boarded shut from the inside, and locks were placed on the outside of the doors. Several pairs of manacles, used to restrain the women, were found in the house.
  Castro abducted the three between 2002-04.

 

A model of Ariel Castro's house displayed in court

One of the rooms in which the captives were held

Chains with which the captives were restrained

He lured one of them into his home with the promise of a puppy, and enticed another by inviting her to meet his daughter. The judge banned Castro from ever seeing the daughter, now six years old, whom he fathered with one of the captives.

Other details of the women's ordeals have already emerged.  Castro starved and beat one victim (Michelle Knight) each time she was pregnant until she miscarried - five times. He forced the same woman on threat of death to deliver safely the child he fathered with another victim on Christmas Day 2006.  He then raped the woman who had helped deliver his daughter.

There are plans to demolish the house where the three were held. That seems to be a most appropriate  course of action.