The disgusting former Cleveland bus driver who held three women in a captive, rape-filled hell for more than a decade blamed a sexual addiction for his evil transgressions, and insisted he wasn’t a “monster.”
“I’m just sick,” lowlife kidnapper Ariel Castro told an Ohio judge during his sentencing hearing. “I have an addiction.”
Castro, who faces life in prison plus 1,000 years for raping, torturing and beating three women he abducted, even had the nerve to the judge, the victims and their astonished families that life in the house of horrors was “normal.”
“You guys know all the harmony that went on in that home,” Castro said, turning toward the victims.
“There was harmony in that home. I was a good person. I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me and do some research on people who have addictions so you can see how their addictions take over their lives.”
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Castro, 53, went on to talk about the 6-year-old girl he fathered with one of his rape victims.
“My daughter made every day for me after she was born,” Castro said. “She said, `My dad is the best dad in the world,’ and that’s how I tried to raise her. She had a normal life for those six years. I would take her to church. We would come home and it would just be normal.”
Prosecutors said that on Christmas Day 2006, Castro forced one of the women on the threat of death to safely deliver the child he fathered. The same day, prosecutors say, Castro raped the woman who helped deliver his daughter.
One of the victims, Michelle Knight, told the court about her horror.
“I spent eleven years in hell now,” Knight, 32, said during the emotional testimony. “Your hell is just beginning. You will face hell for an eternity. You will die a little every day. … You deserve to spend life in prison.”
Knight, in an emotional, nervous voice, told the court that she thought about her son every day she was in captivity and that Christmases were especially hard because she wasn’t with him. Her son was 2 years old when she was abducted.
“I cried every night,” Knight said. ”I was so alone.”
Castro, as part of a bargain to avoid the death penalty, pleaded guilty last Friday to kidnapping, raping and beating Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus.
The three escaped May 6 after Berry, the girl’s mother kicked out the bottom of a screen door and ran to safety. Castro was arrested within hours.