I’ve been quiet about the Ariel Castro case, and it’s not for lack of awareness of the case. It’s been on my mind a lot since the story broke in May. I was at DomCon LA when Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus were rescued. For those who don’t know, DomCon is an event that celebrates consensual adult behaviors that many people just don’t embrace. DomCon is a lively, playful event where you can indulge your fetish mind by buying porn, competing in The DomCon LA Pet Show and Awards, or taking a class called An Introduction to Psychological Warfare, to name a few options. And if you don’t understand it or don’t care for that kind of engagement, that’s fine. Part of consent means having your boundaries honored when you want or need to abstain from an activity or situation.
Ariel Castro’s case has fuck all to do with consent. Life in prison plus 1,000 years doesn’t seem like enough to me.
Where do I even begin to address my horror and disgust?
Is it because he said he’s not a monster, but a man with an addition to porn?
Maybe it’s because he claims that all of the sexual contact he had with Knight, Berry, and DeJesus was consensual, and that they weren’t virgins anyway.
It’s truly possible that my rage has something to do with the 92 pounds of rusted chain that were recovered from the rooms where Castro shackled his captives.
Or maybe it’s because this miserable, and admittedly sick, son of a bitch kidnapped three girls who he repeatedly raped, threatened, assaulted, and terrorized for a decade got away with it for so long, only to ask for forgiveness from them today for his actions. According to the New York Times piece released after Castro’s sentencing, he believes he has been unfairly characterized:
“These people are trying to paint me as a monster,” Mr. Castro said. “I’m not a monster. I’m sick.”
He apologized to the victims, and said that he was not a violent person and blamed his actions on addiction to pornography.
Earlier testimony from law enforcement officers on Thursday painted a picture of Mr. Castro as calculating, remorseless and sadistic, a man who kidnapped the three women, repeatedly beating and raping them, and often keeping them chained to a pole in the basement of his house.
Joshua Barr of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified that Mr. Castro had a gun in the home and 92 pounds of chains that were used to restrain the women. Prosecutors also offered photographs from the home showing an elaborate system of alarms on the doors and a motorcycle helmet that Mr. Castro forced the women to wear when he raped them. Mr. Castro also made the women play Russian roulette and threatened them with a gun.”
Ariel Castro admits that he needed help-but he never got any. He didn’t seem to look for someone who might consent to extreme roleplay. No, he repeatedly violated these women and stole a decade from their lives. There is not a single element of this story that is OK. The Cleveland kidnapping case is so extreme that one of the only positive comments I’ve heard is “at least they’re all still alive.”
I might be into some bizarre and painful shit, but this is not the kind of person I am, and it’s not the kind of person who I would have found at DomCon nor any other respected fetish event. We might restrain one another in basements, we might stage elaborate kidnapping fantasies, we might engage in usual-and to some, disturbing-sexual practices, but the bottom line of our world is consent. There’s a reason we call it “play.” We encourage aftercare when a scene ends. In short, we don’t take by force and let people suffer through and after our play.
And yet, there is an upside in this nightmare in that Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight are moving on. I cannot possibly estimate what it will take to truly overcome this ordeal, but these women are incredibly resilient. Rather than use any more words of my own, I leave you with theirs:
XOXO OTK,