The easy way out

I was still up last night when Facebook and Twitter started exploding with news of Ariel Castro’s suicide in prison. If you don’t recall the name, he was the guy in Cleveland who held three women captive for ten years, and he was recently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

I refuse to post the bastard’s picture here, so you get Colonel Meow instead.

I felt about as angry Colonel Meow looks when I heard the news. What immediately struck me was that these women were strong enough to survive for ten years, and with the help of one brave Clevelander, were able to escape. Apparently their will to live and survive was strong, and from what I’ve read, they are doing as well as can be expected.

But not Castro. He decided that the prospect of life in prison was just too much for him to bear. So he twisted a bedsheet into a rope and hung himself.

You coward. You pussy (no insult to Colonel Meow intended). There is more strength and dignity in the pinky fingers of those women than there is in all of you. There is more courage in Charles Ramsey, the guy who saved them, than you could ever dream of possessing.

It’s times like these when I wish, just a little bit, that I believed in Hell.

I hope the women can take strength in this and will not feel robbed of justice. I feel a bit of that myself, because the guy should have had to spend the rest of his life experiencing what he put those women through, and that includes the rapes. I hope they can come away from this news realizing that in the face of their strength, he was weak. That they withstood years of imprisonment and abuse at his hands, but he was unable to make it past a few months in jail. That they are alive and he is dead. They will go on, and he will not. They have the rest of their lives ahead of them. His is done. Forever.

You’re still standing, ladies. Continue to be strong, and know that, in the end, you beat him.