Ariel Castro Son: I Am Not My Father

Ariel Castro's son has been left "shell-shocked" by how his father went from "captured to convicted to imprisoned to dead" in the space of a few months, he writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Ariel Anthony Castro says he is as "horrified and disgusted and angered" as anybody by his father's crimes, and was shaken both by the news and how he was harassed by the media. To the younger Castro's horror, one major news network mistakenly used a photo of him lifted from Facebook for a story on the Cleveland kidnapping.

Castro says he wanted to "scream from the rooftops" that "I am not my father, and I can't explain his actions or be held accountable for something I never knew he was doing." But he has decided to leave hate behind and accept that his father's punishment "is between he and his Maker." He hopes that his father's life and death should be discussed in the hope of changing how we deal with "sexual predators, domestic violence, mental illness and, yes, prison safety," he writes. "If we can prevent a repeat here or anywhere, then justice truly will have been served amid all the broken pieces my father left behind." Click for his full column. (More Ariel Castro stories.)