MORE ON AUSTRIAN FATHER WHO IMPRISONED DAUGHTER for 24 YEARS

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.

Questions pile up in Austrian incest case

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. "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.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/201688,questions-pile-up-in-austrian-incest-case--feature.html


.

Relevant Pages

  • Bi.nh Aussie down under (kinh di.)
    ... Austria Says Man Locked Up Daughter ... Austrian police have arrested a 73-year-old man ... Elisabeth, 42, told the police that in 1984, her father drugged, ...
    (soc.culture.vietnamese)
  • Teen daughter of Austrias incest victim stabilized, new details
    ... Vienna - Further gruesome details in Austria's "house of horrors" incest ... Kerstin, 19, the daughter of Elisabeth ... father in August 1984, handcuffed and tied to a pillar and, for months ...
    (alt.true-crime)
  • Re: Bi.nh Aussie down under (kinh di.)
    ... Austrian police have arrested a 73-year-old man ... Mr. Fritzl?s daughter, identified by the police as Elisabeth, was ... Elisabeth, 42, told the police that in 1984, her father drugged, ...
    (soc.culture.vietnamese)
  • Re: Bi.nh Aussie down under (kinh di.)
    ... Austrian police have arrested a 73-year-old man ... Elisabeth, 42, told the police that in 1984, her father drugged, ...
    (soc.culture.vietnamese)
  • Tel: Josef Fritzl: I deserve credit, Im no monster
    ... Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who fathered seven children with his daughter ... Meanwhile, the Fritzl case has reached the Austrian parliament, where MPS ... when her father kidnapped her but told ...
    (alt.true-crime)