The Ohio Dilemma

The full horror of what went on in Seymour Street has yet to be revealed, what we appear to know now is bad enough. It raises all sorts of questions about the meaning of 'a community', particularly if, as seems to be the case here, the Street had changed in the last 10 years, with families moving out, foreclosures, boarded up property, and the general income level of the area which seems to be poor -although a relative of Castro had arrived from Puerto Rico and done well for himself, running a successful business in Cleveland.

The Florida case suggests Neighbourhood Watch has operational flaws; whereas in Cleveland maybe there wasn't enough Neighbourhood Watching: but is it your business if the guy across the street beats his wife? Did that neighbour really see another woman, naked, crawling around Castro's garden?

Were the police at fault for not identifying Ariel Castro from the photofit when the first kidnappings took place?

And suppose your neighbour is puzzled by your partner who looks like a woman but talks like a man?

I don't know the answer to the dilemma -if a community really exists and people know each other, and like each other, maybe it works when something odd happens and can't be concealed. But I fear most places most of the time are anything but communal.

It ended with community action, but could the same care and attention have prevented Castro from getting away with it?

You just made me look out my front window and think about my neighbors, and I'm kinda paranoid now.

I tried to answer with some sort of certainty but I couldn't. I imagine even those people thought it couldn't happen in their neighborhood. I think I know my neighbors pretty well but realize they probably know nothing about me so what do I really know about them? We're all very decent to and respectful of each other. The worst thing I see is the Korean lady across the street yelling at her kids outside of her house and I hear it inside my house. Nice lady but just has her ways. Those kids get good grades, I'm sure.

I have a relative who works in the media in Cleveland. The thing about the girls naked on all fours, in chains being walked around the backyard is BS. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. At most, some of the girls were only ever outside the house twice in the ten years that they were there. Even then, they were disguised, and had been threatened with their deaths, the deaths of the others, and more.

What is now starting to be known is the level of control which he had over them. If one of them did anything he disapproved of, he would take it out on another, he had made threats against all of their families, deprived them of basic necessities and humanity until they complied. Daily rape, sometimes multiple times daily, punching the girls to give them miscarriages, physical brutality to keep them in line. He was just evil, and used fear and manipulation to keep them quiet, and submissive. A lot of the details in the police reports are being kept very secret, as the descriptions alone would continue to victimize these women. Just the rape charges are being limited to single counts, because at some point, when they range in the thousands for each victim, it's too overwhelming.


There's a lot issues that contribute to lack of Community these days. Internet being one, there have been some studies showing that people are becoming increasingly anti-social thanks to the internet and places like Facebook. That people prefer communicating by text and e-mail rather than face to face, because they don't have to get to know anyone.

That area of Cleveland has a lot of CMHA (low income, assisted) housing. It's not uncommon for people to move in and out after as little as a month or two. The guy who kicked the door in had only been about a year. With that kind of turnover, it's not uncommon to think that a lot of people never got to know their neighbors. I've been in my neighborhood since 2009, I can only tell you 2 of my neighbors, and couldn't even get you last names without stealing their mail to discover it.

I've lived in an upper middle class neighborhood for over 25 years, the lots are couple acres each so we don't really notice the neighbors. I generally know by name the neighbors on my dead end road as we run into each other at the mailbox and get together about once a year to clean up the private road. However, I have no clue who are the neighbors in the line behind up.

I shudder to think what they are into, probably he has a mistress and has a fetish about transgendered women. He even might have had several Chinese women for group sex. Oh wait , thats me ....


edit Back being serious, what this guy did was truly sick. But our societal systems to protect and work with people to address this is also sick. Someone can get serious time for plowing over a Kangaroo Rat, but not always for assault on a person. We need to rebalance our legal system to get more uniform punishments.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wednesday, September 4, 2013, 1:04am EDT

ARIEL CASTRO DEAD AFTER PRISON OFFICIALS FIND HIM HANGING IN HIS CELL

By ROBERT HIGGS, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ariel Castro, the man sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the abductions of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, is dead.

Castro was found hanging in his cell at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient, south of Columbus, said JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

He was housed in protective custody, which means he was in a cell by himself and rounds are required every 30 minutes, Smith said. She had no other details about how he was hanging when he was found.

Emergency life saving measures were attempted by prison staff. Eventually he was transferred to the medical center at Ohio State University, where he was pronounced dead at 10:52pm.

An investigation will be conducted in conjunction with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Smith said.

Castro was sentenced Aug. 1 to life plus 1,000 years imposed by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo after he pleaded guilty to the abductions and rapes of the three Cleveland women.

They were rescued in May from Castro’s house on Seymour Avenue when neighbors spotted a frantic Berry and helped her break out. After she called police, officers entered the home, finding Knight and DeJesus upstairs.

Castro admitted in July that he kidnapped the women and raped them repeatedly while holding them — sometimes in chains — in his home. He pleaded guilty to hundreds of counts of kidnapping and rape, as well as two counts of aggravated murder.

Copyright © 2013 Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC. All rights reserved.

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Bitch move on his part...

I live rather close to Cleveland and this freaked me out. It just goes to show you really can't know who your neighbors are but it also shows that we should try harder to find out who they are. Maybe if more of his neighbors tried to get to know him , he would have been caught long ago. But idk just my thought.

I'll easily damage all sense of community if it means keeping another human being from being raped in a dungeon. How is that even a question? Seriously, what's wrong with you? People will always end up hanging out together. If that has to be sacrificed every once in a while so you can do some immediate good, emergency level good... so fuckin' be it. What? are you really going to damage all of humanity by stopping a rape in your neighborhood cause you manned up and made it your business? Fuck outta here.