Even as Ariel Castro accepted responsibility for raping and torturing three women, he shocked a packed courtroom Thursday, insisting that he's a "good person" and that he lived with his victims in "harmony."
"People are trying to paint me as a monster, and I'm not a monster. I'm sick," the 53-year-old former school bus driver said only moments after one of his victims tearfully spoke of her years in his "hell."
"My sexual problems been so bad on my mind, I'm impulsive," he said. "I believe I am addicted to porn, to the point that it really makes me impulsive."
Here's a little of the outrage over Castro's remarks.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, ruminating on Castro's future, spared no disturbing imagery:
The Jailer who is now the jailed, explained that he was captive to his primal instincts. It'll be interesting to see if he's as understanding when his future house mates in the pen want to act on their own primal instincts.
Speaking with NBC News, Dr. Mark Levy, a forensic psychiatrist, noted the contradictions in Castro's words (Note: Dr. Levy has not examined Castro):
“It’s a rambling denial of responsibility even though he takes responsibility. It’s a failure to appreciate the breadth and the depth of his crimes. It’s a lot of rationalizing, including the convenient 'I'm addicted to porn.'”
The New Yorker unpacked the pure evil that Castro has come to symbolize:
He uttered the sentence “I would like to apologize to the victims” while simultaneously arguing he was not a victimizer. The subtext of his meandering mea culpa was that, sometimes, villainy so easily masquerades as normalcy because it’s unaware, or unable or simply unwilling to acknowledge, that it’s even wearing a mask.
The Daily Beast took a more direct route to the point with this headline that speaks for itself:
"Seven Crazy Things Ariel Castro Said Today"
Finally, in a roundtable discussion on HLN, attorney Lauren Lake let it rip in no uncertain terms:
I have no psychological terms, I have no legal terms. This sicko fool has a lot of nerve. I am so angry at the way he sat in court today with that casual talk, as if he was trying to give commentary on his own life, like we wanted to know, without apologizing genuinely, showing remorse.
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