Ohio kidnapper Ariel Castro said he
is "not a monster" after one of his victims confronted him during his
sentencing hearing to describe her "11 years in hell". Castro said he knows what he did was wrong, but that he is not a
violent person and that his captives asked for sex and were not tortured.
"These people are trying to paint me as a monster. I'm not
a monster. I'm sick," he said during his sentencing hearing on Thursday.
Castro also claimed the women lived a happy life with him.
"We had a lot of harmony that went on in that home,"
he said.
The former school bus driver, who pleaded guilty to 937 charges,
including kidnapping, rape, assault and aggravated murder, was sentenced to
life in prison without possibility of parole plus 1,000 years.
Before the sentence was handed down, victim Michelle Knight
addressed the court and her former captor.
"You took 11 years of my life away and I have got it
back," she said.
"I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning.
I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for
eternity."
The 32-year-old Knight did not face Castro as she read her
prepared statement, but he glanced toward her several times after she entered
the courtroom.
Ms Knight was the first woman abducted by Castro in 2002 after
he lured her into his house with the promise of a puppy for her two-year-old
son.
"I missed my son every day. I wondered if I was ever going
to see him again," she told the court.
Castro later made a rambling statement in which he blamed his
sex addiction, his former wife and even the FBI for not thoroughly
investigating the abductions.
He apologised to his victims but also claimed most of the sex
was consensual.
"I just hope they find it in their hearts to forgive me and
do some research on people who have addictions, and see how addictions take
over their lives," he said.
Judge Michael Russo dismissed Castro's claims that the women
lived a happy life with him.
"I'm not sure there's anyone in America that would agree
with you," he said.
The judge also told Castro that there was no place in the world
for people who enslave others.
"These women never gave up hope," he said.
"In fact, they prevailed."
Earlier, prosecutors called several witnesses to detail Castro's
daily assaults on the women, recounted in
diaries that compared the women's experience to that of
prisoners of war.
The women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when
they were 14, 16 and 20 years old - and were held captive for a decade.
The three, Ms Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus,
23, escaped in May, and Castro was arrested within hours.
For years, Castro chained his captives by their ankles, fed them
only one meal a day and provided plastic toilets in their bedrooms that were
infrequently emptied, prosecutors said.
He locked all of them in a vehicle in his garage for three days
when someone visited him, prosecutors said.
Castro said he did not have an exit strategy from his
complicated double life and finally gave the women a chance to escape by
leaving a door unlocked, court documents showed.
Witnesses, including a police officer who was among the first
ones to arrive at the scene, described the desperate condition of the three
victims.
Cleveland Police Officer Barbara Johnson said the three were
"thin, pale, scared" and were asking what had happened to them.
Ms Knight was "very, very scared", and was having a
hard time breathing, the officer testified.
Throughout the hearing, Castro listened and frequently talked to
his lawyers.
Ms Knight sent police a handwritten letter thanking them for
their help collecting cards and gifts for the women.
In the note, she wrote: "Life is tough, but I'm
tougher!"
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