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Showing Original Post only (View all)'Most of the sex ... was consensual': Castro's blame-the-victim act all too familiar, abuse experts [View all]
Source: NBC News
Ariel Castros words at his sentencing hearing on Thursday are almost jaw-dropping. Given a chance to speak before he was sentenced to life in prison, plus a thousand years for aggravated murder and for holding three young women captive for 11 years, he repeatedly blamed his victims.
He denied he raped and beat Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, claiming instead that they asked him for sex and that his sexual addiction was to blame. He even said the abuse couldn't have been that bad because DeJesus "looks normal." While many onlookers were astonished, abuse experts said they hear that kind of language and justification every day.
NBC News asked them to weigh in on specific comments Castro made:
"Most of the sex that went on in that house, probably all of it, was consensual," Castro said. "These allegations about being forceful on them -- that is totally wrong. Because there was times where they'd even ask me for sex --many times. And I learned that these girls were not virgins. From their testimony to me, they had multiple partners before me, all three of them."
Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/health/most-sex-was-consensual-castros-blame-victim-all-too-familiar-6C10821794