Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (34 page)

Sylvia Colon, Gina’s cousin, spoke on behalf of the DeJesus family.

“To Ariel Castro’s family, we are saddened that you are burdened with this horror and will unfortunately forever be tied to these atrocities. Please know that we do not hold you accountable and pray that you can one day be whole again. Continue to love and support one another—we promise you that with this recipe you will be triumphant.

“Our family recognizes it is not for us to judge or determine any punishment. Only a higher power can do that.

“Today is the last day we want to think or talk about this. These events will not own a place in our thoughts or our hearts. We will continue to live and love.

“We stand before you and promise you that our beloved family member thrives. She laughs, swims, dances, and more importantly she loves and is loved. We are comforted in knowing that she will continue to flourish. She will finish school, go to college, fall in love, and if she chooses, will get married and have children. She is where we will continue to put our energy. She lives not as a victim, but as a survivor. Her insurmountable will to prevail is the only story worth discussing.”

Then she turned to the defense table and faced Castro directly.

“To Ariel Castro:
Que Dios se apiade de su alma.
”

May God have mercy on your soul.

Michelle stood before the judge and described the pain of being separated from her son. He had been placed in foster care before she went missing, and she had been working to regain custody when she was abducted. Then she addressed Castro: “I spent eleven years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all that happened, but you’re going to face hell for eternity.”

Judge Russo asked if Castro had anything to say before sentencing.

For the next sixteen minutes Castro stood at the defense table, rambling in a soft voice, without notes, appearing to voice thoughts as they came to him, in no particular order. He had pleaded guilty to almost a thousand counts of horrendous crimes. But he sounded, for all the world, like a man whose feelings had been hurt by all the mean things being said about him.

He described being abused and said he was addicted to sex. He said that pornography had pushed him into “the art of masturbation,” which he would engage in for “two or three hours a day nonstop.” He claimed he had never been abusive until he met Nilda, whom he beat because “I couldn’t get her to quiet down.”

Castro insisted that Jocelyn had had a “normal life” and would probably describe him as “the best dad in the world.”

“There was harmony in that home,” he said.

“Most of the sex that went on in the house, probably all of it, was consensual,” he told the court, insisting that his imprisonment of the three women did not involve violence: “I simply kept them there without them being able to leave.”

“I just want to clear the record that I am not a monster. I did not prey on these women,” he stated. “I just acted on the sexual instincts because of my sexual addiction. . . . I am a normal person. I am just sick. I have an addiction, just like an alcoholic has an addiction.”

Finally he offered an apology: “I am truly sorry to the DeJesus family, Michelle, and Amanda. You guys know all the harmony that went on in that home. I ask God to forgive me. I ask my family—and I apologize to my family also for putting them through all this. I want to apologize to the state of Ohio, the city of Cleveland, for putting a dark cloud over the city. I just want to apologize to everyone who was touched by these events.

“I just hope that they find it in their hearts to forgive me and to maybe do some research on people who have addictions so they can see how their addiction takes over their lives.”

He then criticized the FBI, saying: “I feel that the FBI let these girls down” because they questioned his daughter, Arlene, about Gina’s disappearance, “but they failed to question me. If they would have questioned me . . . it’s possible that it would have ended right there.”

He apologized to the judge for taking up his time and then complained about Gina’s cousin telling him in court, “May God have mercy on your soul,” which he said was “uncalled for.”

After alternating between describing the “harmony” in the house and saying how sorry he was, he concluded: “So again, thank you, everyone. Thank you, victims. Please find it in your hearts to forgive me. Thank you.”

On the bench Russo could barely conceal his disgust. He accepted the sentencing agreement and asked Castro to rise as he issued the court’s final word on his case:

“Sir, there is no place in this city, there is no place in this country, indeed there is no place in this world for those who enslave others, those who sexually assault others, and those who brutalize others.

“For more than ten years you have preyed upon three young women. You subjected them to harsh and violent conduct. You felt you were dominating them, but you were incorrect. You did not take away their dignity.

“Although they suffered terribly, Miss Knight, Miss DeJesus, and Miss Berry did not give up hope. They have persevered. In fact, they prevailed. These remarkable women again have their freedom, which is the most precious aspect of being an American.

“Mr. Castro, you forfeited that right. You now become a number with the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. You will be confined for the remainder of your days. You are hereby remanded for transport to Lorain Correctional Institution.

“Now for Miss Knight, Miss DeJesus, and Miss Berry, as well as your young daughter, we celebrate your futures. We acknowledge the faithfulness of your families, your friends, and all others in this community who so fervently believed that you were alive. On behalf of the judges and the staff of this court, we wish you continued success and a sense of peace.”

Castro stood, and bailiffs led him out a side door of the courtroom.

It was the last time he would ever be seen in public.

August 1: Gravestone

Amanda

I’m watching the sentencing on TV at home with Jen Meyers from the FBI. I’m glad I didn’t go down to the courtroom. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me again.

Beth said what I wanted to say. And if I had been up there in front of the cameras and so many people, it would have been hard not to cry.

It makes me angry to listen to his ridiculous, delusional statements. I want to slap him.

“None of that is true,” I say to Jen. “How can he say that?”

“That’s just in his mind,” she replies. “It doesn’t matter what he says. You know what really happened.”

While we’re watching the sentencing hearing, Jen gets a text from Jim Wooley. He says the people from Kotecki Family Memorials, who donated my mom’s grave marker, called to say it was laid at her grave today. It’s a bronze stone with roses etched around the border, and a color photo of my mom, smiling.

My mom has amazing timing.

First I felt her pushing me toward the door the day I needed to find the strength to escape Seymour Avenue.

Now on the day he is finally being punished, her memorial stone, which means so much to me, arrives. She is the reason I’m still alive, and her spirit will get me through whatever lies ahead.

Gina

I wake up on my parents’ bed and hear his voice on the TV.

I have a sex problem. I was a victim
. Blah, blah, blah.

They were the same things he said in the house so many times. I’m glad I decided not to go to court. It’s pointless to talk to him or to listen to him.

You know what? Even if he was a victim, he had the power to choose. He didn’t have to do what he did to us. If he was mistreated as a kid, it should have made him more aware of how important it is to treat other people well. Just because he abused me, I’m not going to go abuse somebody else.

He keeps talking—that voice! I heard it every day for nine years. I’ve had a few months without it, but now all his crazy talk is back. He says one thing and then the opposite. He did nothing wrong and treated us well, but he is sorry for what he did and wants to apologize.

He’s telling so many lies, it’s hard not to get angry. He keeps talking about the “harmony” on Seymour Avenue. Does he think people are stupid? He tied us up and forced all of us to say how much we wanted sex with him. He really is crazy if he actually believes we did.

I want to scream at him: “Nobody cares what you have to say! You’re not going to convince anybody that you’re not a monster. Maybe you weren’t a monster every day, but you were most definitely a monster. You put me in prison. Now it’s your turn.”

August 5, 2013: Return to Seymour

Angie Castro Gregg walked back into her father’s house at 2207 Seymour Avenue two days before it was scheduled to be demolished.

Cleveland officials wanted the house razed as quickly as possible, and to shred and throw in the dump all its contents, to prevent it from becoming a ghoulish attraction. The last thing they wanted was “House of Horrors” tourism.

Castro had agreed on July 29 to forfeit the home, but not before breaking down in tears and complaining to police that it was a “perfectly good house” and should not be destroyed.

Evidence had been removed, every inch of the house had been photographed, and the FBI prepared a wooden scale model that cost more to build than the value of the actual house. The electric company cut the power and a contractor had donated his services to tear the place down.

Before the demolition equipment arrived, Castro’s family was given a chance to salvage any personal items. So now, with FBI agents watching, Angie climbed the stairs to the second floor, a part of her former home that she had not seen in fifteen years.

She had left this house when she was fourteen, after her parents split up. Although she had been back several times, her father had never let her upstairs. What she found there now made her shudder: Windows boarded over. Holes drilled in the walls. Missing doorknobs. Wires in strange places. Locks on the outside of the doors.

She felt sick. It was hard to imagine what sort of mind had devised it all, and it was worse to accept that it had been her own father’s.

She walked into what had been her parents’ bedroom and saw a child’s drawings on the walls and clothes for a little girl, and realized Amanda and Jocelyn must have lived there. She was horrified at the thought of Amanda giving birth to a baby and raising her inside these four walls.

She walked into the little bedroom that had been hers. Pictures she had taped to the wall were still there, as were her elementary school plaques and awards. It was eerie to see her childhood memories in a place that had witnessed so much misery.

Angie collected as many old family photos and other personal mementoes as she could find, including her red dog puppet she found in the attic.

Just a few months earlier, she had spent several hours in the living room of this house helping her father set up his Facebook account, while Amanda, Gina, Michelle, and Jocelyn were locked away upstairs. She wished there had been a clue. A noise. A creak. A cry. Anything that would have made her suspect that something was wrong. If she had discovered the girls, or if her father had confided in her, she could have forced him to go to the police and let the girls go.

Over the years she had remained close to her father and talked to him often. But now she couldn’t bring herself to face him. She hadn’t gone to visit him in jail. She knew how persuasive he was, and that he would try to convince her that what had happened wasn’t as bad as it sounded, so she cut him off completely.

Her mother had died the year before, and now she realized her father wasn’t who she thought he was.

She felt like an orphan.

August 7, 2013: Demolition

Amanda

They are tearing down 2207 Seymour, and it’s big news on TV.

There has been so much interest in that house that police built a security fence around it and have been guarding it around the clock. People have driven from all over to see it, causing constant traffic jams.

As a huge piece of heavy equipment with a giant mechanical claw rips off the front of the house, on TV I can suddenly see right into the room where he kept me for so long.

It’s such a strange feeling. For so many years I dreamed of smashing those walls, ripping the wood off those windows—anything to get out of there. Now I’m watching this big machine do it for me, taking just a few minutes to destroy what had been my whole world.

Jen Meyers called and asked if I wanted to be there, or even just drive by in her car while it was happening. It was nice of her to ask, but Seymour Avenue is the last place in the world I want to be.

Gina stayed home, too, but I see Michelle is there letting some balloons go.

Tim McGinty, the county prosecutor, is being interviewed on TV and is explaining they want a “new and positive use” for the land, maybe a park. He says that they were going to use the $22,000 in cash they found in Castro’s washing machine to pay for the demolition, but the company did it for free as a public service. He offered the cash to me, Gina, and Michelle, but we didn’t want Castro’s money, or anything of his.

I’m grateful that I will never see that house again.

Gina

I’m watching the news at our friend Janet Garcia’s house. I didn’t want to go to the demolition and face all the cameras and reporters. My mom said she could take me down there and hide me in a car, but then I’d feel like I was in captivity again. No, thank you.

My mom is there watching, and my aunt Peggy is actually climbing into the big crane. She takes the controls and smashes the claw straight into the second floor of the house, right into the bedroom where he held me. When the house starts crumbling, I can hear people cheering. I don’t make a sound, but nobody is cheering louder than me.

August 2013: Downward Spiral

At 6:25 p.m. on August 2, the day after his sentencing, Ariel Castro arrived at the Lorain Correctional Institution, about twenty miles southwest of Cleveland—a standard first stop for prisoners from northern Ohio entering the state prison system.