Some commenters here have started discussing the Ariel Castro sentencing — and the remarkable, delusional, self-pitying, victim-blaming statement he made before being sentenced — in the Minter Meltdown thread. Because so much of what he said — and so many of the issues raised — are potentially triggering, I thought it would be good to open up a separate thread for this.
Here’s a piece at the Daily Beast with some of the most astounding quotes from Castro’s statement today.
Consider this whole thread to have a TRIGGER WARNING on it for discussions of Castro’s rape apologias and victim blaming.
“Myeyesburn: spoofed what, mra stuff? I think that’s something you have to go looking for. I’m more worried about the bog standard sexists that are everywhere.”
Sorry, Hellkell, I think I misunderstand you. What about spoofs?
Agreed. It’s a very bad idea to suggest state-supported vengeance. Nothing good lies along that path. Keeping him locked up so that he can’t do it again, otoh, is what judicial systems are for.
Ideally I’d like judicial systems to rehabilitate people so they won’t do it again after they’re released but… well I read those things he said, and if he’s gonna do it again it’s better not to release him.
“But I still think chaining him up and beating him would be society lowering itself that bit closer to his level.”
I also agree with this. Largely because someone has to do the state-ordered chaining and beating and I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone’s psyche. And I don’t support capital punishment. So life without parole is the harshest sentence I will support, and this guy deserves the harshest sentence.
Oh, sorry. Spoonfed. I’m an idiot at 8 in the morning. It all makes sense now.
Am I correct that there might be some typo-generated confusion between the words spoonfed and spoofed occurring?
Oh, my first time getting ninja’ed here, I think!
Lol. First time I’ve ever ninja’d. I’m usually late to the party.
@myeyestheyburn
“Defending this piece of shit though? WTF is wrong with people?”
A variation of the same thing that’s wrong with people who’re defending George Zimmerman.
Yeah, usually I’d be in favor of attempting rehabilitation, but it seems to be a lost cause in this case. Which doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t be a good idea to gear the system towards that goal in general, since if you have a system that doesn’t attempt rehabilitation you end up with it spitting more efficient criminals out the other end.
I’m just not expecting even the best system to be able to do anything to reform Castro, given that he seems to feel no remorse at all. You can’t rehabilitate someone who doesn’t think they did anything wrong.
Myeyesburn: i meant spoonfed but the autocorrect didn’t like that
I’ll be honest, Eumenidis, I had no idea what the whole Zimmerman fiasco was about at first or what the problem was, though I knew nothing about it before the verdict. That might reflect badly on me as a person or at least as far as having a sociological perspective goes. People, understandably, found it very hard to talk about when I asked so in absence of a direct explanation by my friends I researched for a few hours instead. The bias in favour of Zimmerman was pretty appalling from a lot of mainstream news sites and made it very hard to discover his background and character. Although, I’m still not familiar enough with the law to decide if the jury was in the wrong based on what was presented in court, though Zimmerman WAS wrong in what he did (playing cop) and therein lies an issue with the system.
Racial violence and profiling here is also an issue, but one that is grossly underepresented in media and largely ignored by bystanders. Last I remember hearing about it was a series of racially motivated attacks against international students, but there was a lot of pressure to catch the culprits because it was damaging the income of universities and tourism. Since then I know of attacks that have occurred, but the papers barely mention it. We don’t like to acknowledge racism exists here :/
myeyesburn: The major blame-holders in the Trayvon Martin case are Zimmerman for his actions, and Florida law (specifically, the ‘stand your ground’ law) that was used to justify them. It’s reasonable also to argue that the law itself was misapplied (and thus, the jury was dysfunctional), since it’s been shown by circumstance that it’s highly unlikely that the law would’ve done the same thing if the situation had been reversed. (Ie, if Trayvon HAD been legally armed, and at some point in their altercation had shot Zimmerman instead, he most likely would’ve been convicted, even though he had a better claim to be ‘standing his ground’ than Zimmerman ever did.) There’s also a strong suggestion that the prosecution and judge flubbed the jury instructions–thereby making it less likely they would correctly apply the law.
I love rehabilitation models and support every effort to instate them in prisons. Not everyone can be rehabilitated and I doubt Castro can, but at least with ongoing counselling and schooling it might be easier to determine who CAN’T be released. I’ve always been of the opinion that if a psychologist in court can declare that someone is a remorseless sociopath, then the psychologists who assess them before parole should be able to do the same (though some will always slip through the cracks, any improvement is a good improvement with public safety at risk). And for other criminals, having that opportunity to work through their issues, learn and be given the potential to do something productive with their lives when they are released will hopefully prevent re-offending. I hate the notion that prisoners should be treated like they are subhuman. Some are terrifying monsters who deserve to be kept away from the public, but total deprivation of liberty should be enough of a punishment (isn’t that something we all fear?). Others, who can acknowledge their errors and be compassionate, deserve the opportunity to work on their flaws and move past their criminal career.
auggziliary: The quote was from a link further up-thread. Whether the blogger was serious or trolling is hard to say, but honestly, it’s still a vile piece of misogynistic shit.
There was another story in California this week of a 15 year old girl who was found in captivity, being periodically locked into a box and starved and of course raped repeatedly by two adult men who were running a marijuana farm. The cops weren’t looking for the girl; they showed up to bust the farmers and discovered her.
As for Castro, I don’t support violence against prisoners, but this is one case where a lifetime of solitary confinement seems fitting to me. And I don’t need to think Charles Ramsay is a saint to be glad he did a good thing when this moment arrived and helped those women, instead of turning his back on them.
@freemage
It’s Masculist Man, so I don’t know if it’s a joke or not. The pessimist in me says he’s 100% serious.
@Auggziliary – I wish it was a troll. I had hope when I found this:
http://mensrightsboard.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/warningfake-mens-rights-site.html
But it’s actually a warning about the Good Men project and how evil feminazis are using it to coerce the men into positions of self-hating subservience.
I know of a few others in the AU Men’s Rights spheres that are just plain awful. One has his own radio blog that would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucked up. My friend had some horrible experiences with one of the most vocal of these assholes, which we had initially wanted to share here on Manboobz but it became apparent that there is a need to protect her identity and safety since the creep actually threatened violence against her and the format through which they communicated makes her easily identifiable. :/
Yeah, if there’s anyone with an abusive history I’d respect, it’d be someone who unequivocally expresses sincere motivation to atone for hir previous crimes. (Ramsey said that his intervention was done for the sake of atoning for what he did to his wife when he was an abuser.)
Following an extremely stupid move by my uncle that resulted in him getting caught in a roadblock set up to find Ted Bundy (who had been loose in the high country of CO), my mom ended up in the same police station as Bundy and made VERY accidental eye contact with him. She once told me that his eyes were terrifying – that there was nothing behind them. I never really understood that until the CNN camera cut to Castro during Michelle Knight’s victim statement. His eyes are… just empty. And he was smirking. I don’t think I have ever closed a browser tab faster.
In before Quark manifests to tell myeyestheyburn that her friend shouldn’t worry because, “Online threats of violence almost hardly never actually lead to real violence, except when they do, but those times don’t count, and also the lights are not flickering I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Agh, the first ‘him’ should be my uncle. Who had something like six hundred pounds of weed in his trunk when he got stopped.
@me
Oops! I meant to say “If there’s any previously abusive person I’d respect…”
I didn’t mean to say that I could respect an abusive history.
WTF, my typos are disappearing? I swear I caught the problem just as I hit the post button…
auggziliary: Yeah. Odd enough, that’s the part of the story that no one seems to believe. My grandpa had partly financed the whole thing because (I’m told) weed was cheap as fuck here in Michigan and scarce on the west coast. He was NOT PLEASED to lose that much money, and even less happy when grandma found out.