May 2013 Douchey McDouche Bag Award

“Because of the way he is – he just comes out to his backyard, plays with his dogs, tinkers with his cars and motorcycles and goes back in the house. He’s someone that you look at and then you look away, because he not doing nothing but the average stuff. There’s nothing exciting about him – well, until today.”

This quote, as given to local news by Cleveland hero Charles Ramsey on May 5, 2013, describes his neighbor and suspected pedophile, kidnapper and rapist, Ariel Castro moments after Ramsey freed three women and a child from a house they were suspected of being held captive in for almost a decade.

 The women, one of whom had been missing from the Ohio neighborhood since 2002, became heroines for surviving what appears to be years of bondage, terror, abuse and rape.

 Ramsey quickly became an internet hit, faux celebrity and hero due to his quick actions and engaging banter.

But for Castro, a former school bus driver, he became a monster, a prisoner, an outcast, and yes, oh yes, the May 2013 winner of the Boom Bap Radio – Douchey McDouche Bag Award.

By all accounts, prior to the discovery of three imprisoned and abused women in his house, this err…”winner” was well regarded in his neighborhood.

He led the charge to find those responsible for kidnapping the three-girls, gave hell-a-bar-b-que’s and loved to play merengue music. He was described as “a beautiful man” by one relative and had actually authored an editorial on kidnapped children – what a douche!

News of his alleged involvement in the disappearance of three girls over a two year period and news that he’d also secretly fathered a child by one of his alleged captives put an end to all of the singing, dancing and rib eating. He was denounced by his brothers and even his daughter, who had been a friend of one of his alleged captives.

Obviously, Castro had fooled everyone into believing he was a great guy for more than a decade.

What a maroon, what a pretender, what a friggin’ douche bag!

The 52-year-old Castro, a bus driver who was fired just last Fall, emerged from the shadows like Mr. Hyde, on a miraculous day in early May 2013 when 26-year-old Amanda Berry screamed for help from a neighbor and clawed and scratched her way out of a one-family home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.

Berry’s escape, which was aided heavily by next door neighbor Charles Ramsey, shed light on a house of horrors created by Castro. The modest one family home was usually only opened at the backdoor and was the site for what appear to be Castro’s sick, perversions and obsessions with restraining young girls and women.

Undetected and undeterred, douche bag Castro appears to have begun amassing a collection of young girls in 2002.

In that year, 21-year-old Michelle Knight went missing in August. Authorities believed the formerly troubled teen may have run away.  Months later, 16-year-old Amanda Berry disappeared after working the night shift at a local fast food restaurant. Gina DeJesus, a 14-year-old friend of one of his children, vanished a year later.

Police theorize that the “friendly” neighborhood bus driver may have offered each girl a ride home, the most disturbing offer went to DeJesus, who he is thought to have told she was going to his house to see her friend, his daughter.

Reports describe the Castro household as a special place, where the douchey bass player, allegedly chained and tied up his victims, raped and beat them and then played his special brand of “Hide and
Seek.”

The Douche Bag edition of the game was played where Castro would pretend to leave and just when the girls were getting a little hope of escaping, he’d pop out of his special hiding place and beat the living crap out of them and then get his nasty freak on.

Neighbor Charles Ramsey said, when he tried to open the front door to the house, it was secured in such a way that an occupant could only grab the mail through a small opening. He said the front door was so fortified that he had to pry the bottom of it open to get Amanda Berry free.

After Castro left his house of horrors for a little lunch, Berry, ironically a former Burger King employee, was freed from captivity by Charles Ramsey, who was famously munching on a McDonald’s burger when he heard her cries for help.

To round out the weird fast food ties to the case, Castro was arrested with one of his, two brothers while dining at McDonald’s. His other sibling was arrested at home.

Both Castro brothers were released and not charged with any crimes related to the missing women.  Ariel Castro was indicted on 139 counts of rape, 177 counts of kidnapping; seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felonious assault and a count of possession of criminal tools.

Ariel Castro was also charged with two counts of aggravated murder, for the alleged starving and beating of Knight and inducing miscarriages, during her reported five pregnancies.

He also reportedly raped and impregnated Berry under the threat of death if the child did not survive. In 2007 she gave birth to her daughter in a kiddie wading pool, after having to revive the child with mouth-to-mouth for fear of her life.

Many question why police were unable to detect that for more than a decade this monster had detained three young girls in his house against their will and how he was able to carry-on carefree despite sporadic reports of screams for help and naked women running around in his backyard.

Police did visit the Castro home at least twice, but obviously to no avail.

Only a super human effort could locate and free the three women, who many already assumed were dead and the young child born the bi-product of rape.

And A Hero Comes Along

 

Lampooned by some and scrutinized by the media, dishwasher Charles Ramsey became the face of humanity and heroism in the Cleveland case when he responded to calls for help coming from the house next door.

Ramsey responded to pleas for help from Berry, who was fighting to free herself. Without fear or trepidation, Ramsey did everything right. He ripped the secured door open, freed Berry and called police to free three others including a six-year-old child.

The only thing he did wrong was let a “pretty, little, white girl” run into his arms. You just knew something was wrong with that!

He also gave a beyond entertaining interview to the local media that made him an instant internet star and meme.

There have been internet tributes, t-shirts and action figures created in honor of Sir Charles – all of course without his input or permission. Outside of his many television interviews and internet infamy, Ramsey gained little for his act, other than the obvious gratitude of the public and former captives.

Local burger joints promised free burgers for life, McDonald’s allegedly offered free burgers for a year, but only Bruce Merrin, director of the Las Vegas Speakers Bureau signed the flamboyant Ramsey to a deal that may earn the Cleveland native some coin.

Merrin said the former dishwasher could earn as much a $10,000 per speaking engagement under the Vegas speaker’s bureau.

We will always hail him as an undisputed hero.

But as for Castro, while all of those alleged atrocities would be more than enough to label you a unmitigated douche, but the fact that he continued to work as a school bus driver, hosting cookouts and playing in local merengue bands, makes Castro a “special guy.”

Only a very disturbed and masochistic SOB would be “special” enough to seek out friendship from the neighbors while holding children in your basement for torture and rape.

However, allegedly kidnapping your daughter’s friend and participating in the search for her and others while they were prisoners in your home makes you not only a douche for May, but also a leader in the voting for Douche of the Year.

We can only hope you are getting all of the treatment in the real prison that you were meting out in the makeshift ones you created in your basement and in the rooms of your house.

Now assume the position, you filthy, torturous, evil – douche bag! You are the May 2013 winner of the Boom Bap Radio Douchey McDouche Bag Award.