Michelle Knight, one of Ariel Castro’s victims, addressed the court and her former captor, “You took 11 years of my life away and I have got it back.”
“I spent 11 years in hell. Now your hell is just beginning. I will overcome all this that happened, but you will face hell for eternity,” she said before the sentence was handed down.
The 32-year-old Knight did not face Castro as she read her prepared statement, but he glanced toward her several times after she entered the courtroom.
Ms Knight was the first woman abducted by Castro in 2002 after he lured her into his house with the promise of a puppy for her two-year-old son.
“I missed my son every day. I wondered if I was ever going to see him again,” she told the court.
Castro said he knows what he did was wrong, but that he is not a violent person and that his captives asked for sex and were not tortured.
“These people are trying to paint me as a monster. I’m not a monster. I’m sick,” he said during his sentencing hearing on Thursday.
Castro also claimed the women lived a happy life with him.
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