0 michelle knight to get up there in court, to face her tormentor and the entire world watching her. i just -- i can't even imagine the courage and the strength that took. what a powerful, powerful person that is. it is an incredible thought. jay was talking about how delusional castro is here and how he kept interrupting. he says that he's sick, he's not a monster, that this wasn't rape it was consensual. let's actually take a listen to a little of that. >> you may not have liked the wording or the terminology. that's it. okay? maybe i can tell them to you. >> the violent part, you made it sound like i forced myself on to them. >> by virtue of your plea, that's what you did. you pled guilty to that and by virtue of your plea you raped someone. that's what it means. >> just unbelievable that given what he has done and what he has acknowledged doing, that he would be trying to seek some sort of sympathy and explain his actions at this point. it's just unreal. >> no, it's sick. it's sick is what it is, and he's by all means a monster. one thing that has struck me about this case, guys, from the beginning is obviously these are heinous crimes that mr. castro is admitting to, but what an indictment on society that these young women could live in a house like this for 11 years and mr. castro had barbecues at his house, he had people doing sing alongs in his living room and all along this was hidden. are we that disjointed where three women can be tied up in someone's basement and nobody knows about it, no one heard a single scream? it's just very odd. there's folks in that cleveland neighborhood who said they hope that house is demolished. i agree with them. that should be burned down. >> he did expand on that. he said he's a very happy guy. he's not angry. he does have an addiction, he has an addiction to porn. we're still left with a lot of questions, ari, in terms of why he did this, why he treated these women like this. i feel like i still have a lot of questions. >> yeah, i think that's right. the trial process or in this case the plea process gives you this window. we're watching it here in the news. people around the country are watching a case that as you were saying was obviously extremely troubling, extremely inhumane, extremely immoral and what we see is the perspective of a defendant. the defendant has the right to address the court and to address his accusers. you see that sort of delusional view of this as some sort of quasi consensual family life, that kind of language obviously not accurate, not fair, and then as crystal was eluding to, it's a piece of this, there has been a movement in the courts to have more of a space for victim's perspectives and rights. it ranges in different states. in many places you see a process for the stroim address the court, address the accuser. obviously here you have the judge making the ultimate binding decision about sentencing. this man is going away for life, but the victim's views come out. as many people have commented and now in the social media world you saw immediate reaction to herr. this woman having been through so much having a chance to stand up for herself. we're just observers here, you don't know everything that's going on, but we hope it's part of a healing process for her. >> yeah. i want to go back to luke's point about what it says about our societies that these women could be living there in captivity without anyone knowing about it and there was a lot of discussion about the working poor neighborhood. i think this could happen anywhere. i think we have become separated from our neighbors and with these sort of isolated lives. at this point let's bring in former fbi profiler clint zant. off the top i wanted you to weigh in on ariel castro's delusional rambles of this formal family life he had created in this house of torture. >> yeah, you know he says he's not a violent person and i'm sure none of us talking about him today are, but what he says notwithstanding whether they're the rambles of a sick man or not, i mean, it makes you want to reach out and grab him through the television screen and pull him right back in your living room and do something to him. i mean, this guy put these women through torture that has just literally unseen in this country to be repeated over and over again. this is something similar to -- it's like a concentration camp guard in world war ii who said, wait a minute, it wasn't my fault. somebody made me do it. but nobody made him do it. he choose to do it himself and he chose to rio fend against them 13,000 some plus days over and over again. he had a choice every day to turn them loose. he knew what he was doing. now i just don't want to engage in any psychological executions. i think supreme to take responsibility for themselves and when societal louse somebody to blame others, i think that's where we start to break down. >> clint, luke russert here in burbank. i have a question regarding the psyche of the victims. >> yeah. >> there was last week where amanda berry stood up at a nelli rap concert. the whole crowd stood up to them. is it good for them to become quasi celebrities in the public eye? what's the pattern for them? high profile case. how do they find that normal balance in life and is it just best to get away or is it best to go out in front of the public view? >> i think that is a good question, luke, and i think that's something that they're going to have to deal with. realize, it's only been three months since these women were released and there may be something on the surface that allows them to go out and wave and say hi to people or something like this, but, luke, there are emotional chains that are stronger than any steel chains this man could have put around their ankles as he's chained them into a bedroom and these chains take a long time to -- the physical scars are going to disappear but the emotional scars, the ability for these women to trust anybody much less a significant man in their life is going to be long coming. and even though we may see them wave and look happy, luke, it's post traumatic stress over and over. they're going to re-live these things. they're going to hear sounds. they're going to smell smells that are going to scare them to death in the middle of the night. we think we have nightmares. they have nightmares most of us have never even thought about. >> clint, it's been incredible to watch just how strong their bond is. none of us can really imagine what they went through. michelle knight, i watched her testimony today. it was so incredibly emotional. she said i can forgive him. i can never forget. we talked a little bit before about finding closure for these women to forgive. how important is it for them to have seen him in this moment today where he was power lsz, where he was not in control? clint, are you able to hear us? >> i think we've lost -- >> yeah, i can. >> go ahead, clint. >> yeah. well, i think it was a very important moment for them, but even that moment that we all wanted so much for these young women, especially for the young woman in court would somewhat cancel out what this monster -- he says he's not a monster. he should be the living definition of monster in a dictionary. for him to say that i didn't really kidnap them, they kind of went on their own. any physical contact i had with them, most of it was consensual. i never beat them or heard that as we try to put some type of civilization around the acts of a monster, that was still a challenge for them. he still took away from them the truth which is to stand up and say i did horrific things and am responsible for it. i'm sorry. i deserve to go to jail for life. that's what they should have heard and he took that away from them. >> clint, you make an important point there, that hopefully people can learn from it. crystal was talking about how the nation responds to looking at these criminal acts. the notion of coercion. it's a big topic. those are the things the law cares about a lot. as soon as an individual talks about the threat of violence. big difference between what the defendant castro is delusionally asking or how it works, last question, walk us through how this actual plea works because a lot of people think of these kind of crimes and they imagine a trial scene and we cover trials. we know about 97% of crimes are dealt with through the plea bargain process, not an actual trial. walk us through that piece of what happened today. >> yeah. if we had to take every criminal case to trial in this country, it would take 10, 15, 20 years to get a case to trial. as you suggest and rightfully so. the vast majority of cases in this country are plea bargains. what is a plea bargain? the defense and prosecution put it together. you give me something, i'll give you something. in this particular case the prosecution says we'll take the death penalty for the alleged murder of the fetus of one of the women, we'll take that off the table but you have to plea out and understand you're going to jail for the rest of your life. and part of it, i sat there maybe like you today, and i watched the judge laboriously go through count after count after count. you want to say, just stop it. tell the guy he's going to prison for life and let's get him off this stage but, again, every t has to be crossed. every i has to be dotted. when he gets in jail he may look for a reason to appeal his sentence, to appeal his case so everything had to be done, everything had to be done appropriately. what i marvelled at was how everyone involved who gave the testimony, even the vimt, the judge, we all retained our composure and brought some type of civilization to a very uncivilized individual. >> indeed. we should also remember that there is a little girl involved here, the daughter of amanda berry. and in part of his delusional ramblings ariel castro was talking about what a good dad he is. what is life in recovery going to be like for this little girl going forward? >> well, in this particular case even though castro got life, these three women and this little girl, they also have a life sentence. they have a life sentence where a decade in the case of the young women, a decade of their life was taken away and now they have to become reinstitutionalized to society itself. that's a process that's likely never going to fully take place. this little girl, even though she was home schooled. all of us try to imagine, what is it like for ten years to see the outside of a house twice in ten years. >> wow. >> to be locked, to be chained, to be fed once a day, to be bathed once a week or every two weeks. your meals consist of fast food sandwiches thrown at you. these women were treated like animals, worse than any animal would be treated. so coming back again to reintroduce themselves to society, to friends, to dating, to parties, to everything, fortunately i know the fbi would be working with them and the cleveland police and others, they're going to be working with psychologists to help reintroduce them, to provide them advice and this is counsel. once again, mr. castro got life. these women and this little girl all have their own life sentences that they have to beel with. we just hope and pray they do far better than he does. >> such a horrific story. clint, thank you for joining us. we'll be right back with much more of the cycle.