CLEVELAND, OH, July 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Cleveland man who kidnapped and raped three women for as long as a decade, beating them so brutally that they miscarried his children, accepted a plea bargain this morning to serve life in prison plus “no less than 1,000 years.”
“You'll never leave prison alive,” Cuyahoga County Judge Michael Russo told Ariel Castro, 52, while making sure the rapist understood the consequences of his plea.
“I knew I was pretty much going to get the book thrown at me,” Castro replied.
Castro, whose trial would have begun on August 5, faced 977 criminal charges, including aggravated murder. Without Friday's plea bargain, he could have become the first American on death row for killing an unborn child.
The former school bus driver kidnapped three women – Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight – while they were in their teens or early 20s and imprisoned them in a rundown Cleveland-area home, chaining them to the wall and brutally beating them.
He sexually assaulted the trio at will. When he got the women pregnant, Castro starved them and forcefully beat their abdomens, causing them to miscarry.
Knight, who was kidnapped in 2002, said she lost five children during her captivity.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty had said he intended to seek the maximum penalty for “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies.”
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Ariel Castro fathered one child with Amanda Berry, their six-year-old daughter, Jocelyn. In the 911 call she placed when she was rescued on May 6, Berry called the child, who was conceived in torturous rape, “sweetheart.”
Standing in court Friday morning, Castro blamed his actions, and his lack of reading skills, squarely on porn.
“My addiction to pornography and my sexual problem has taken a toll on my mind. I was victim as a child, and it just kept going,” he said.
His porn compulsion caused him to have trouble focusing when he tried to read, he said, when Russo asked if he understood the English language.
Judge Russo cut Castro off, telling him to save his explanation for his August 1 hearing, when he will be formally sentenced.
Castro's agreement meant his victims will not have to relive their years of torture on the witness stand.
The three women's attorney, Kathryn Joseph, said her clients “are relieved by today's plea and “satisfied by this resolution to the case, and are looking forward to having these legal proceedings draw to a final close in the near future.”
As a part of the bargain Castro promised to cooperate with investigators and tell them the full extent of his actions.
If additional crimes come to light that warrant it, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty could still seek the death penalty.