Including the Witness Impact statements that were delivered by relatives of two of his victims, and one that was delivered directly in person by one of his victims, (the one who was imprisoned the longest, Michelle Knight)
And then came the statement delivered by Mr. Castro himself....
Over the course of his rambling and bizarre dissertation, he blamed pornography, alleged abuse he had suffered as a child, the victims, and the FBI....
He allowed as how he was really a "moral person" with an "addiction"....
He indignantly denied that he was a "violent person", (explaining that the only reason he had hit his wife...broken her nose and knocked out her teeth...was because "she wouldn't shut up") and categorically denied that he had ever been "violent" towards any of the three teenage girls he had kidnapped and kept as sex slaves for 10 years...
He wasn't violent, he just, "wouldn't let them leave"...
He seemed to be genuinely offended at the idea that he had somehow mistreated these young women...(well, aside from the keeping them prisoner for 8-10 years thing)
Here are some quotes: (these all come from this link: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... today.html)
“They’re trying to say I’m a violent person,” Castro said of the prosecution. “I’m not a violent person. I drove a school bus, I was a musician, I have a family.”
Instead, Castro blamed his behavior on an addiction to sex and pornography. “I'm not a monster. I’m a normal person. I'm sick,” he said. “I have an addiction, just like an alcoholic has an addiction … I did not prey on these women. I just acted on my sexual instincts.”
He also sought to explain his actions by stating that he had been sexually abused himself as a child. “As I stated before, I was a victim of sex acts, as a child. This led me into viewing pornography for my whole life.
Apparently he has also had access to TV news coverage about his victims (that should stop)Prosecutors revealed in court that Castro had targeted his second victim, Amanda Berry, by offering to give her a ride home from her job at Burger King. Castro allegedly invited Berry to come into his home to see his daughter—whom Berry knew—but instead Berry was immediately chained to a pole in the basement.
However, Castro seemed to blame Berry for her own kidnapping.
"Amanda, she got in my vehicle without knowing who it was. I'm not trying to put the fault on her, but I'm just trying to make a point across I'm not a violent predator.”
In a particularly galling move, Castro also cast blame for "what happened" on the FBI, saying that the agency has "let the girls down" by not finding them sooner.
Referring to a photo of Amanda Berry at a recent concert, Castro said, "That right there itself proves that girl did not go through no torture. If that was true, do you think she would be out there partying already and having fun? I don’t think so. “
Referring to Gina DeJesus, he said, “She looks normal. She acts normal. A person who has been tortured does not act normal. They might act withdrawn and everything … She’s happy. The victims are happy."
"God as my witness,” he added, “I never beat these women like they're trying to say that I did. I never tortured them.”
Castro said his daughter—whom he conceived with his victim Amanda Berry—would say, “My dad is the best dad in the world.”
“That’s how I tried to raise her in those six years,” he said, “so she won't be traumatized or anything like that. I tried to take her out into public to give her a normal life.”
But the award for the single most revolting, offensive, disgusting, and depraved thing this scumbag had to say has to go to this statement...“I'm not a violent person. Like I said, I drove a school bus, I was a musician, I had a family. I do have value for human life because every time I came home I would be so glad of the situation, as crazy as it may sound.”
(Admittedly there are many worthy contenders for that distinction, but this really surpasses them all:)
Words fail....“Most of the sex that went on in the house, and probably all of it, was consensual,” he said. “These allegations about being forceful upon them, that is totally wrong. There were times that they would even ask me for sex, many times. And I learned that these girls were not virgins from their testimony to me. They had multiple partners before me—all three of them."
A big shout out to the presiding Judge Michael Russo...
After Castro had completed this vile self pitying screed, the first thing he said was, "I want to thank Miss Knight for her remarkable restraint during that statement"...
And Judge Russo should also be thanked for his remarkable restraint for not asking one of the sheriff's deputies present to pull out his gun and shoot Castro in the head right then and there....(I'm sure there would have been a number of volunteers)
But Russo didn't grandstand or play to the cameras; he acted with pure professionalism...
He didn't yell and scream or wax indignant; but he made sure, in a calm, professional and methodical way, that he crossed every T and dotted every I in this complex case with over 900 charges. And he elicited from Castro the responses he needed to make sure that whatever garbage he had said in his "statement", that he fully understood that he was pleading guilty to crimes that made him guilty of rape, being a sexual predator, and a host of other violent offenses...
