Ohio suspect fathered child born in captivity

In the latest development to surface in the case of three women who were kidnapped and held captive in Cleveland, Ohio for nearly a decade, the state’s attorney general said on Friday that DNA tests confirmed Ariel Castro, the man charged in the abductions, fathered a six-year-old girl believed to have been born in the house where he allegedly held the victims, including the child’s mother.

“Forensic scientists worked throughout the night to confirm that Castro is the father of the six-year-old girl born in captivity to one of the kidnapping victims,” Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement.

While the tests did not link Castro to any other state cases, DeWine added that the FBI was checking the DNA sample on the national level.

Castro, 52, was arrested shortly after the young girl was found with her mother, Amanda Berry, and two other kidnapping victims – Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight – when they were freed from a house owned by the suspect on Seymour Avenue in Cleveland’s disadvantaged West Side neighbourhood on Monday.

In the days that followed the three women’s rescue, the grisly details of their long captivity slowly began to emerge. Officials said that the three victims were at times bound in chains or rope and endured starvation, beatings, rape and, in the case of one victim, several forced miscarriages.

The women told investigators they recalled leaving the confines of the house just twice during their ordeal, ushered on both occasions into a separate garage on the property while disguised in wigs and hats.

Berry’s daughter was born in an inflatable children’s swimming pool on Christmas Day, 2006, officials said.

The three women’s imprisonment came to an end when neighbours, alerted by frantic cries for help, broke through a locked door of Castro’s house and freed Berry, who had disappeared the day before her 17th birthday in 2003 on her way home from work at a fast-food restaurant.

DeJesus, 23, vanished at age 14 after school, and Knight, 32, was 20 when she went missing in 2002.

All three told police this week that they were abducted by Castro when they accepted his offers of a ride in the same neighbourhood where they were found.

Read More: FRANCE 24: http://www.france24.com/en/20130510-ohio-kidnapping-suspect-castro-fathered-child-born-captivity