Lissa

Horror in a cellar: woman tells of 24 years of imprisonment and rape by her father | World news | The Guardian

Authorities in Austria are trying to piece together the details of how a 73-year-old man managed to keep his daughter imprisoned in a windowless cellar for 24 years while he repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.

Police said the 42-year-old woman, identified only as Elisabeth F, told them her father, Josef, had lured her into the basement of the block where the family lived in Amstetten, north-west Austria, on August 24 1984, and allegedly drugged and handcuffed her before locking her up in the dungeon. A police spokesman said she was "psychologically extremely disturbed", but her version of events was "completely believable".

The father was in custody last night.

She said she had been abused by him from the age of 11. "In her own words, she was continuously abused by her father," the spokesman said. She said she had borne seven children by her father, including twins, one of whom died in 1996 after just three days. The father removed the body from the cellar and burnt it.

Police said many questions remained to be answered in the case, which is reminiscent of that of the Austrian girl Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted, aged 10, on her way to school and locked in a windowless cell before dashing to freedom in August 2006.

Police said Josef, an electrical engineering technician by training, had told investigators how to enter the basement prison through a small hidden door, operated by a secret code which only he had known.

"There is not only one, but a number of rooms: one room to sleep in, one to cook, and there are also sanitation facilities," Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, told the broadcaster ORF.

Josef's wife, Rosemarie, had been unaware of what happened to her daughter and is believed to have assumed Elisabeth had disappeared voluntarily, after her parents received a letter from her saying they should not search for her.

The drama began to unravel last weekend when Elizabeth's 19-year-old daughter, Kerstin, who lived in the cellar, was left at a hospital with a life-threatening illness. A search for the mother increased in urgency as Kerstin's condition worsened.

The plight of the mother and children was discovered on Saturday night when Elisabeth and her father, Josef appeared together at the hospital. They were taken to the nearby police station where he was arrested for sexually abusing his daughter and holding her captive.

Kerstin is said to be in a critical condition suffering from an unknown illness, in the intensive care unit of Krems hospital.

"[Josef F] is so far refusing to say anything," Amstetten's police chief, Franz Pölzer, said yesterday. He added that Elisabeth "gave the impression of being in an extremely disturbed psychological state" and was "in a bad way physically". She had agreed to speak to police only after being assured that she and her children would never again have contact with her father.

They said it appeared that when Josef F imprisoned his daughter in 1984 he gave the impression that she had left home of her own will. She remained on the Interpol missing persons list. Police investigators at the time were of the view that she might have become a member of a sect.

Their suspicions were reinforced when her parents received a strangely worded letter from her, stating: "Don't look for me, because it would be useless, and would only increase my suffering and that of my children. Neither are too many children and education desired there."

Josef and his wife, Rosemarie, repeatedly appeared in the media as the distressed parents of a missing teenager.

On various occasions between 1993 and 2002, Josef claimed that his daughter had left three children on his doorstep along with notes asking him to look after them. The couple were given permission by the authorities to become foster parents to what were assumed to be their grandchildren.
But, according to police, Elisabeth had given birth to the children in her cellar prison, along with four other children including the one that died. Her father had removed the children. Of the six children - three boys and three girls aged between five and 20 - five-year-old Felix, Stefan, 18, and Kerstin lived with their mother in the cellar, where they never saw sunlight and received no education.

"She taught them how to speak," Polzer said, adding that Josef had provided food and clothing, but they had never received any professional medical care.

DNA tests will be carried out in the next few days to confirm that Josef fathered the six children, but the spokesman said: "All indications point to the fact he did."

The cellar was being searched by forensic scientists yesterday, while others combed the grounds of the house, bordered by high hedges. "There are things that you just don't want to see," a policeman at the house said. "The fewer pictures you have in your head, the better."

Police said Elizabeth's mother was not suspected of involvement, having accepted that her daughter had run away. "As far as we've been able to ascertain, the wife of the accused had no contact with the 42-year-old woman and the other children," a local council official, Heinz Lenze said. The mother was also receiving counselling.

One neighbour said Josef had been "inconspicuous" and "always greeted us in a friendly way." Another said she had often seen Rosemarie with her grandchildren. "She is really very nice, taking the grandchildren to school -but we knew nothing of what was really going on."

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Lissa

Charter - News

AMSTETTEN, Austria (AP) — The children locked in the basement never saw the light of day for years. A retired electrician has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children with her in a windowless cell sealed by an electronic keyless-entry system, police said Monday.

One of the children died in infancy and was tossed into the furnace of what stunned Austrians have labeled a "house of horrors," officials said. The suspect owned the gray stone apartment building, lived there with his family, and rented the other units to relatives.

Austria is still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a girl who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years, and residents of this working class town west of the capital were puzzled as to how the latest instance could go undetected for so long.

Questions were being raised as to how the suspect — identified as Josef Fritzl, 73 — deceived neighbors, social workers and police for so long.
"How is it possible that no one knew anything for 24 years?" asked Anita Fabian, a teacher in Amstetten. "This was not possible without accomplices."

Fritzl was placed in pretrial detention and faces up to 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses under Austrian law.

Police released Fritzl's full name and photograph at a news conference Monday, after his identity was widely reported by media in Austria and elsewhere in Europe.

Fritzl was born in 1935 and was a young child when the Nazis annexed Austria before World War II.

His daughter, now 42, was 18 when she was imprisoned in the cell constructed deep beneath the family's apartment in the building, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

"He admitted that he locked his daughter ... in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children," Polzer told The Associated Press.

According to police, Elisabeth said she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later.

Police said the surviving children are three boys and three girls, the youngest of whom is 5. The oldest child is 19. DNA tests were expected to determine whether Fritzl is the father of the children, as he claims.

Investigators said they were trying to determine how the victims could have been hidden away for so long from other families in the building and everyone else in the town of 23,000 people.

Fritzl "managed to deceive everyone," including his wife, Rosemarie, who apparently was unaware of the existence of the children in the cellar, Polzer said.

Fritzl had seven other children with Rosemarie, police said.

Officials said three of the secret children — aged 19, 18 and 5 — "never saw sunlight" until they were freed a few days ago.

Polzer told reporters that Fritzl was an authoritarian who took care never to allow anyone near the cellar. Hans-Heinz Lenze, a senior local official, said experts were trying to figure out if anything could have been heard beyond the cell's padded, reinforced concrete walls.

Polzer said investigators believe Fritzl acted alone, but appealed to the public to come forward with information.

The daughter, Elisabeth, had been missing since 1984, and authorities said her father had concocted a cover story that she had joined a cult and disappeared. She was found by police in Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip.

Police released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a gaily decorated small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said the keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping.

Three of the children lived with the grandparents and were registered with authorities. Fritzl and his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.

Authorities said the victims and Fritzl's wife were under psychiatric care in an undisclosed location.

Lenze said the 5-year-old, a boy, appeared "cheerful."

"Of course, they are very pale," he added.

The shocking discoveries recalled the case from summer 2006, when Natascha Kampusch escaped after being largely confined to a tiny underground dungeon in a Vienna suburb for more than eight years.

Kampusch was 10 when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in 1998. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train hours after her escape.

Kampusch, now 20, issued a statement Monday saying she wanted to contact Elisabeth to offer emotional and financial help.

Questions were being raised in Austria about how another similar case could have happened.

"The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong," the newspaper Der Standard said in a commentary.

Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street from Fritzl and his wife, said the couple would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.

"They appeared normal, just like any other family," he said. "I'm totally shocked. This was next door. It's terrible."

The case unfolded after the eldest of the secret children, a 19-year-old, was found unconscious and gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to a hospital. Authorities publicly appealed for her mother to come forward to help diagnose her condition.

After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday near the hospital. Fritzl freed the three captive children that same day, Polzer said.

Police said Elisabeth appeared "greatly disturbed" during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for.
Investigators said the area where she and three of the children were held included rooms whose height did not exceed 5 1/2 feet. The area had a TV and small hot plates for cooking.

Authorities said Elisabeth told them her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11. She told police that in 1984, he sedated her, handcuffed her and locked her in the cellar.

Police said a letter written by Elisabeth had apparently surfaced a month after her disappearance, asking her parents not to search for her.

Lenze said that because the couple had custody of the children, social workers made a "considerable" number of visits to the family.

"Interestingly, the father was seldom present during such visits," he said.

The social workers found nothing out of the ordinary, reporting that Fritzl's wife was attentive, the three children were doing well in school and clubs, and that all of them played musical instruments.

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budnkota

I had just read this - how completely appalling. Did I understand correctly? Could it only be 15 years in prison for the father? If that's teh case, maybe he'll still spend the rest of his life there, since he's older.

Just unimaginable

Kaytee

wow I wil lcome back and read that but how horrific

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Music-dad

He should be shot and pee'd on...


and not in that order.

Just sick.

jtee

A part of me is always skeptical of such stories, but I also know that very rare/bad things like this do happen.

jrrsmom

How do you let someone do that to you? How do you not fight back?

jtee

My guess is that it is similar to the batter wife syndrome, which is psychologically complex in that women stay in abusive situations even when they have many opportunities to leave.

In another thread, there was also a discussions where participants of an incest relationship is mutual. Many years ago I worked in the court system, and a man was arrested for having sex with his teenage daughter over several years. The daughter was forced by court order to testify against her father. She was considered a hostile witness for the prosecution because she felt she had the right to have sex with anyone she wanted, including her father. She wasn't upset that her dad had seduced her into becoming sexually active at a young age (10-11), she was upset that her dad had been arrested and was in jail.

Music-dad

Read: "Perfect Victim - The True Story Of The Girl In The Box"

or research: Cameron Hooker

Basically the court case comes down to a battle between two words,

Persuasion vs. Coercion

budnkota

She probably did at first - she said she'd only talk if they protected her from contact with him.
It also says he drugged her when he kidnapped her and took her down there -- she probably fought time and time again at the beginning and eventually realized there was just no way for her to get out of a windowless, soundproof room with a keyless door.
She probably eventually submitted simply because he had all the power. He could deny her food. He could turn off the water supply and the electricity. He could bring down her greatest fear and release it into the dwelling (rats, a tarantula, etc). After that first baby was born and he took it, he had that threat to hold over her head to - that he'd harm the baby. That he's start to rape her daughters as he did her.. Plenty of ways she could have killed herself and escaped that way, but otherwise, sounds like not so much so..

I can see her position. What I can't grasp is her fathers. How can you be such a horrific slime, and go on to lead a perfectly ordinary life otherwise. How long must he have been plotting this before he drugged her? How did he get food, etc down there w/o being noticed? Before the first girl was a teen, how did he buy teh daughter feminine products without fear of being seen doing so?