Ariel Castro
As we predicted, Ariel Castro today entered a Cleveland courtroom and while “taking full responsibility” for his abhorrent acts, told Cuyahoga County Judge Michael Russo that, “these people are trying to paint me as a monster and I’m not a monster. I’m sick.”
Sick? Yes.
Monster? You bet!
Insane or incapable of separating right from wrong or controlling his actions? Absolutely not!
“I believe I am addicted to porn to the point that it makes me impulsive and I lost it,” CNN reports Castro as saying, adding that he’s “not trying to make excuses.”
What do you call it?
“I have an addiction. Just like an alcoholic has an addiction.”
Be that as it may, we don’t put people away for being addicted to alcohol. But we sure as hell should if they’re addicted to abusing women.
Vicious predators who cannot deny their crimes often try the next best thing – explaining them away. Prolific serial killer Ted Bundy also fell back on the pornography excuse. New York’s “Son of Sam” killer said it was a 3,000-year-old dog that told him to kill. Washington, D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo claimed he participated because of the influence of his older partner and mentor John Allen Muhammad. Yet when forensic psychologist Stanton Samenow asked him if he did everything Muhammad told him to, Malvo casually replied, “No.”
There are two main reasons why violent offenders cop the “devil made me do it” excuse, even after conviction. One is for their own self-image, figuring that if they have a mental disease they are not responsible. This is particularly important to them if they have any kind of religious belief. The second reason is that they know they are going to be locked up for the rest of their lives, and they are looking out for themselves. If they can convince a judge that they are more mad than bad, they could be assigned to a more lenient and protected institution.
The defendant’s sister promised that her brother’s statement before the judge would allow people to see “the other side of Ariel Castro.”
What difference should that make? Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy dressed as a clown and entertained mortally ill children in hospitals. Does that mitigate his killing of so many other children and make us feel any better about him?
In his presentation, Castro did try to humanize himself when he told the judge that basically, “I’m a happy person inside.”
Well, let’s put it this way. He was a happy person inside as long as he could totally manipulate, dominate and control the three hapless women he had kidnapped and imprisoned, raped, starved and tortured. Everything he did took planning, cunning and organization, and as we explained in a post earlier this week, he didn’t commit these crimes because he was addicted to pornography. He was addicted to pornography because his greatest joy in life – that which made him a “happy person inside” – was sexually abusing defenseless women.
If that doesn’t make him a monster, what does?
People stay addicted to abusive relationships because they don’t understand why love equates to abuse…But the abuser themselves will love someone who can control them – its the formula of the unbalanced mind pretty much. Everything in some ways has a master.
Yes. If it weren’t for people like you two trying to educate people, there would likely still be no awareness or understanding of it at all today. We’d still be mired in the days of “love sickness.” It’s hard because all around you, you see women making foolish choices, a train wreck you as an individual can’t prevent. It would be great if there was basic education about these things in high school.
The problem is we are educating the killers, they are amongst us here and now. I laugh at them and soon the will see who was in control, God is.
This is like Gary Heindnick, I don’t how sick he is he knew what he was doing because he planned premeditated and Budy was correct pornography is bad.
There are so many women out there, perhaps like Castro’s sister, who just don’t understand that a person can sometimes act nice and still do evil things. I think most men get it, but nearly all young American women enter adulthood still believing that if there’s one nice facet of a man, that he’s just misunderstood or deep down he’s a good person or that love will fix them. It’s probably the misconception that gets more women mired in abusive relationships than any other. And the sad irony is that it is borne out of innocense and a loving nature — one that women project onto the men in their lives, whether they’re deserving or not.
In the earlier days of internet, when I would try to tell women on the internet that, they would get militantly mad about it. They just couldn’t accept it, because to accept it destroyed their dream. We women are often in love with love and many will go to great lengths to stay that way. If their man was nice to them before and during sex, then they truly believe that means he’s a loving a nice person, regardless of anything else he does. Apparently, it takes years to learn it isn’t so.
Good observations, Cornerstone. And just the kind of female nature you describe is what these predators cynically exploit when they pray on women.