Michelle Knight Shines at Her Kidnapper, Ariel Castro's Sentencing

Michelle Knight was the last one to be identified after the three Cleveland kidnap victims were rescued, and the last to show herself to the public. She was also the oldest and the one kidnapped the longest. She reportedly suffered several miscarriages after their kidnapper, Ariel Castro, beat or starved her while pregnant. She is also the only one who faced him in court as he was sentenced to life in prison and a thousand years more.

Though she was understandably upset, Michelle Knight read out her statement clearly in the courtroom just like in the video of the three women earlier this month. At times, she spoke directly to Ariel Castro, telling him the death penalty would be too good for him.

She said to him,

Ariel Castro, I remember all the times that you came home talking about what everyone else did wrong and act like you weren't doing the same. 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. From this moment on, I won't let you define me or affect who I am. I will live on, you will die a little every day as you think about the 11 years and atrocities you inflicted on us. What does God think of you hypocritically going to church every Sunday, coming home to torture us?

In other parts of her statement, she added to the public;

I would like to tell you what 11 years was like for me. I missed my son every day. I wondered if i was ever going to see him again. He was only two and a half years old when I was taken. I look inside my heart and I see my son. I cried every night. I was so alone. I worried about what would happen to me and the other girls every day. Days never got shorter. Days turned into nights, nights turned into days. The years turned into eternity. I knew nobody cared about me. He told me that my family didn't care.

She finished her statement by saying she felt stronger. "I'm finally being heard and it's liberating," she said.

According to court details via US News;

The women suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from their prolonged torment, Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical psychologist who is an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder, said on Thursday.

All three endured “repeated episodes that were terrifying, the kind of trauma that we meant when we define the post-traumatic stress disorder,” Ochberg said. “The kind of trauma that you don’t escape for years and sometimes for a lifetime.”

“You are being infantilized, then little by little you’re given what it takes to survive,” Ochberg said. “You deny that this is the person who did all of this to me, and you start to feel as you did as a little baby, with your mother.”

The women survived in part because of extraordinary, and simple, acts of human kindness between them, the doctor said, even if they will never be entirely free of the damage done them by Castro.

Knight, he said, is “an extraordinary human being. She served as doctor, nurse, pediatrician midwife …. She’s a very courageous and heroic individual.”

I hear the extra 1000 years is for the circumstance where Ariel Castro is alive when people discover the secret of eternal life or immortality. It's not a laughing matter though, but this man is really a monster.

I pray these women are able to begin to put their lives together after this.