Saruti

After keeping Katie as prisoner in his own underground prison, it seemed like a fitting fate.

So let's now take a moment to take a look at the psychology behind the villains in this particular case.

And yes, that is, of course, villains, plural.

Because this story isn't just about Katie's kidnap.

It's about the lifetime of abuse that she endured long before she ever set foot in that bunker in 1992.

Now, criminologists, we have talked about this before, but criminologists tend to divide child sex offenders into a few broad subtypes.

I think Sal Illegare probably fits into the type that we could associate with being an opportunistic offender.

Someone who abuses children largely because of proximity and opportunity, because we know he abused lots of people.

He kind of abused anyone who had the misfortune to come into his life.

He abuses the elderly.

He abuses Linda.

Linda's still a piece of shit, but he does abuse her.

and he abuses various children.

It's whoever he can get his hands on.

The victim is there, they're vulnerable, they're accessible, and so this type of offender exploits the power that they have over that individual to get what they need.

On the flip side, you have someone like John Esposito, who fits a subtype known as a preferential paedophile.

This is someone who is specifically attracted to children and actively seeks to build twisted relationships with them, grooming them, manipulating them and even convincing themselves that it's some sort of forbidden romance and not actually abuse.

As Lieutenant Detective Dominic Verone later pointed out,

Katie Beers had the unimaginable misfortune of growing up around both of these types of abusers.

And that's not to mention the twisted behaviour of her godmother, Linda, who, as we know, also sexually abused the young girl.