radgoblin:

I think the scariest thing about cases like Ariel Castro and Joseph Fritzl, (keeping women and girls locked away for years and years, raping them, beating them, forcing them to miscarry and/or give birth alone, without medical attention) is the countless women living in those situations who haven’t been found. Thousands and millions of trafficked sex slaves, untold numbers of missing women and girls who’ve never been found, dead or alive. How many women have lived and died like that, are currently living like that all around the world? That will never be found?

Most of the cases that get significant publicity do so because the men were so brazen and still, nobody knew. Ariel Castro had three women locked away in his home and often threw house parties and barbecues, and somehow, nobody knew. Joseph Fritzl kept his daughter in a basement prison for decades, raising the rest of his family upstairs, who were supposedly unaware. What of the men who’ve been more cautious?

This whole post was prompted because I had a nightmare last night that someone I knew was arrested for keeping a woman locked away. In the dream i was inconsolably angry and disgusted that I had been in that house dozens of times and never noticed, that I didn’t help her, that it could have been me under different circumstances. I wanted to kill myself for allowing that to happen. In the dream I was trying to apologize to her and I woke up sobbing.