Life for Castro

The Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro will spend the rest of his life in prison; Stuff reports:

A former Cleveland school bus driver, Ariel Castro, today pleaded guilty to hundreds of charges of kidnapping and raping three women he held captive and will serve life in prison, the culmination of one of the most sensational criminal cases in the United States in recent years.
At a court hearing, Ohio prosecutors in turn agreed that Castro would not be eligible for the death penalty. The agreement means Castro will not stand trial, sparing the women the trauma of testifying about their abuse by Castro over about a decade.
The women vanished without trace in the same neighbourhood where Castro lived between 2002 and 2004 and were rescued on May 6, 11 years after the first of them disappeared.
Many Americans were alternately elated by their rescue, and stunned by the details which later emerged of his brutal treatment of the women. They had been bound for periods of time in chains or ropes and endured starvation, beatings and sexual assaults, according to court documents and a police report.
On May 6, neighbors heard cries for help from Amanda Berry, 27, and assisted her in breaking open a door to Castro's house, where they also found Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, upstairs. Knight leapt into the arms of a policeman when she saw him. 

About the only credit that Castro can be given is for the early guilty plea. He at least had the decency not to subject his victims to another trauma by having to recount their stories in a courtroom. But the gravity of his offending is such that he will never taste freedom again.

Given the manner in which Castro denied Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight of their freedom for so many years, not to mention they abuses that he subjected them to, that is a fitting sentence. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they rebuild their lives.