Europe Features

Questions pile up in Austrian incest case

Apr 27, 2008, 23:34 GMT

Amstetten, Austria - Amstetten, a town in eastern Austria, feels eerily quiet after Sunday's arrest of a 73-year-old believed to have imprisoned his own daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

The scene outside a house where a 42-year-old woman who was allegedly sexually abused and held prisoner by her own father for more than 20 years, Amstetten, Austria, 27 April 2008. Police believe the woman, whose name was given as Elisabeth Fritzl, was held captive by her father Josef in what amounted to a dungeon below their apartment in the 23,000-population town since 1984, when she was reported missing by her parents. EPA/HELMUT FOHRINGER'We are confronted with an unbelievable crime. It goes above anything I can imagine. It is a dimension where one is almost speechless,' Austrian Interior Minister Guenther Platter said. Local residents, like the rest of Austria, seemed speechless over the mindboggling tragedy, but slowly the questions are starting to emerge: How could this have happened? Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was held in a basement dungeon and sexually abused by her father Josef, while three of her six surviving children lived with him and her mother just above her prison. 'It feels so surreal. It's like this cannot have happened,' said a 50-year-old Amstetten resident, who declined to give her name. Amstetten, population 23,000, is not a pretty place. But neither the ugly industrial estates on the outskirts of town nor the gaggle of 1960s-style architecture suggest the quiet horrors now associated with the town. Walking past the small, grey family home on slightly rundown Ybbsstrasse, a street lined with houses and small businesses not to far from the city centre, passersby are bound to wonder how people failed to notice that something was wrong with the Fritzl family. Elisabeth, then 18, was reported missing by her father in 1984. By then, she had already been a victim of sexual abuse for seven years and had twice tried to run away from home. Over the years, her father produced various 'letters' from his daughter, hinting that she was in the clutches of an obscure religious sect. Local authorities and neighbours only too quickly believed, and investigators never seemed to have considered the family as suspects. Authorities seemed to have no problems accepting Josef's stories that his missing daughter over the course of several years deposited three infants at his doorstep, asking him to look after them. The 'grandparents' were allowed to adopt one, and take into foster care two of the children, who police now believe to be Josef's children with his own daughter. School authorities and social workers never found anything wrong with the family, Austrian media said. Officials stressed that Josef seemed to have led a perfect double life, keeping up the facade of the loving grandfather over the years, even accusing media and authorities of not looking hard enough for his daughter. 'He was incredibly devious. He built it all up very intelligently,' local official Heinz Lenze told Austrian TV. Most surprising for many is that Elisabeth's mother, Rosemarie, 69, never noticed in all those years that anything was amiss. Police believe she never had contact with her daughter or the three children imprisoned with her in the basement, corroborated by Elisabeth's initial statements. Only in a climate of extreme repression could the woman have never noticed that her husband was providing food and clothing for up to four extra people in another part of the house for nearly a quarter century, Austrian experts were quoted as saying. One chapter of the tragedy ended with Sunday's arrest, triggered by an intensive search for Elisabeth last week. Her oldest daughter, Kerstin, 19, had been brought to a hospital on April 19 by her 'grandfather.' The girl, who is believed to suffer from a rare disease, was left on his doorstep by her mother, he told the authorities, who at last decided to take a closer look at the case, if only to get the missing mother to provide medical information on her daughter. Elisabeth and her children are free from their prison, but many questions remain. One of them is what the future will hold for them. Kerstin remains hospitalized in very serious condition, and two of her brothers have seen the sunlight for the first time in their lives only a few days ago.

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anonymousApr 28th, 2008 - 06:44:16

it is unbelievable that such a thing happened for as long as it did without anybody ,including the authorities, noticing.it is a classic case of what women especially poor women have to go through day in day out maybe not to that extreme but bad enough to be a cause for concern.more worrying is the fact that more and more fathers are taking to sexually abusing their own daughters am even worried to leave my children with their father.something needs to be done and done quickly.

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etienneApr 28th, 2008 - 07:49:24

Like the Kampusch case; there are other unreported cases. Quite a serious social problem in Osterreich

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What kind of people are his victims?Apr 28th, 2008 - 21:13:09

What does that kind of imprisonment and limitation turn a person into? What are the children like developmentally? The old guy seems really bad. He needs to go on trial no matter what health problems his lawyers can think to say he has developed.

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Trial?Apr 28th, 2008 - 21:58:35

That man needs to be hanged by the neck until dead.

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ShockedApr 29th, 2008 - 02:47:46

I refuse to believe that Elizabeth's mother did not know anything. Elizabeth was sexually abused even before she was kept in the dungeon and tried to run away twice. How can she not know smtg was wrong with her daughter? And the clothes, food, everything else that Elizabeth and her other 3 kids used/ eat needs to be prepared/ washed and bought somehow and by someone right? Only a woman with an IQ of 10 will not know smtg was wrong when her daughter disappeared and her hubby suddenly started building a dungeon complete with bathroom facilities. And do not tell me for 24 yrs no one needed medical attention in the dungeon? I know my mother will scour the earth for me if I suddenly disappear. And whats with 'finding' the 'grandkids at the door 'abandoned' by Elizabeth? Any mother or grandmother in the right mind would question the state of their daughter's life if she has to abandon 3 kids at your doorstep. I say Elizabeth's mother is a fraud and still is.

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AmalApr 29th, 2008 - 18:33:37

I do not usually condone the death penalty but this is an exception. This is absolutely shocking. Only an extremely unstable individual would do such a thing. Unstable yet intelligent enough to pull it off.
Its very hard to believe that the grandmother knew nothing. However, I did read that the cellar door, which was locked with a code that only josef knew, was hidden behind a book case and she didn't know it was there. It stills seems unlikely unless the cellar was sound proof.

But the most shocking part is the fact that it carried on for 24 years and no one knew.

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Dennis olsonMay 12th, 2008 - 16:47:56

The grandmother has to be involved.she should turn herself in to the authorties now before its too late.

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Dennis olsonJun 18th, 2008 - 03:38:21

It seems as though j. Fritzl has a plan for everything. He is very intelligent, dont sell him short. Does his plan include having his wife go to the hospital, to be with the rest of the family to make her appear innocent? She had to know or else she is brain dead.

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