$8 Million Bond for Accused Kidnapper

09 May, 2013

A former school bus driver accused of kidnapping three young women and raping them during a decade of captivity in his house was on Thursday ordered held on $8 million bond in a Cleveland court, his head bowed and his face turned away from spectators.

It was the first time the dark-haired, balding Ariel Castro, 52, had been seen in public since his arrest on Monday following the escape of three women and a child from his house in a low-income neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.

In Cleveland Municipal Court, Castro was expressionless, his hands in cuffs before Judge Lauren Moore, who set his bond at $2 million for each of the women and the child who was born in captivity.

Castro’s home “was a prison to these three women and the child,” Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Brian Murphy told the judge.

“Today the situation is turned on him,” Murphy said. “Mr. Castro stands before you a captive, in captivity, a prisoner.”

Castro had been formally charged on Wednesday with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. He neither spoke nor entered a plea during his initial court appearance on Thursday.

Castro kept his face turned away from the gallery that was crowded with media and spectators. “He did not want to be on camera,” his court-appointed lawyer, Kathleen DeMetz, said after the hearing.

The $8 million bond set by the judge was higher than the $5 million requested by the prosecutor during the proceeding. The judge also ordered Castro to have no contact with the victims or their families.

Officials said the three women were at times bound in chains or rope and endured starvation, beatings, sexual assaults and in the case of one of them, several miscarriages deliberately induced by their captor.

Reuters

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