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So, perhaps there is justice in this world, after all. Perhaps a monster, who captures, chains, deprecates, enslaves, impregnates and, eventually, murders will face a higher judge than many of us had hoped and clearly at a closer date than we could ever have imagined.
For the four victims in Cleveland, one of whom never survived his or her pregnancy, there probably will be a hollow sense of victory. The thought of knowing their captor would never be freed and would be submitted to solitary confinement for most of the rest of what would have been expected to be a lengthy prison stay, may have strengthened them. Now that sense that he would pay with his freedom and would have time to consider his past actions has been stripped from them by his last cowardly act.
I will never mourn his death, because he doesn't deserve anyone to recall his name in any manner. His crime of making women disappear should be his ultimate fate. The memory of his walking this earth, breathing the same air as his victims and inflicting horrible acts behind closed doors and shuttered windows should be as vacuous as the empty lot where his house once stood.
And so for his victims and their families, their is only one thing to remember and that is to forget. Forget his face, his gait, his smell, his touch, his voice and anything that would ever remind you of his terrible visage. Forget the years of imprisonment and torture as best can be expected. It is only when his memory is wiped away fully from their collective conscience, they will know the true meaning of justice and a measure of true freedom. Only time and their own sense of resolve will heal their wounds.
So, while news crews today and in the ensuing days will recall his suicide seeking responsible parties to blame, I will try to avoid hearing or watching their reports. I don't want to forget what he did. His crimes were heinous. I just want to forget him, blotting out his memory with the same viciousness that he perpetrated his unspeakable crimes against humanity, not just women.
In the end I wish that those who survived their ordeal can free themselves from the bonds of years of hopelessness and despair by knowing that today it is truly over. Today they have something to live for: freedom and self-determination...and life, something their tormentor will never have. Like the Romans who sewed salt into the fields of defeated Carthage, leaving their fields barren, let us strive to make his name and image just as barren in the recesses of our mind. Let us never forget what he did. In the name of his victims, let us make him the non-entity he so richly deserves. It is by these deliberate actions that we will forget and he will disappear forever.
