Horror in a cellar: woman tells of 24 years of imprisonment and rape by her father

[GCP]

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/28/austria.internationalcrime

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.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/28/austria.internationalcrime

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The longer I live, the worse the stories become. :(

[MaineDem]

1. According to the BBC this morning, he has confessed. n/t

[Ecumenist]

2. OMG..I just don't know what to say.... Oh My God....

[JI7]

3. the whole thing is weird, the wife didn't know ?

i just don't see how that is possible.

and especially with the kids turning up they never did a search of the home.

[Sonicmedusa]

7. That is what I think too.

I don't know how cellars are in Austria, if they are under the main house or apart from it, but that aside, he had to feed the daughter and her children, remodel the cellar with plumbing, furnish suppies for the babies, ect. Why were questions never asked by the wife?

[bean fidhleir]

11. "Why were questions never asked by the wife?"

Because women who marry men like that often become psychologically disabled by them. The women don't ask questions because they don't want to know the answers and they don't want to be punished for even asking - there's no upside to such normal curiosity, for them.

[Eurobabe]

4. Creepy and disgusting. Weird because I drove through

that town last summer with my mom on the way to Blindenmarkt to take the train to Vienna. :scared:

[mikita]

5. I'm so glad the "father"

did not die with his secret code before this was uncovered.

Just unspeakable depravity.

Just when I think humans can't sink any lower, someone does.

[Red Zelda]

6. Yeah, this is soooo important

Let's have every media outlet lead with it. That'll fix everyone's problems.

[Sonicmedusa]

8. Your absolutely right.

So lets have 200 more posts about Rev. Wright. That should fix everyone's problems.

[Annces]

9. So horrible

And society goes on with these things just under their nose. This is as horrible as it gets.

[heliarc]

10. Unfortunately, these stories are as old as dirt...

The horrors that the Marquis Desade describes are fiction, but the imagination assumes that the power bestowed in royalty, rulers and patriarchs of the past (and present) would suggest that many of these stories have terribly real cousins locked deep in dungeons the world over. Sad, but true.

[Beaverhausen]

12. 'House of Horror' children never saw daylight

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/28/austria.cellar/index.html


AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Three children freed from a cellar in which their mother had been imprisoned and raped by her own father for 24 years had never seen daylight, police in Austria have confirmed.


1 of 3 Police spokesman Franz Polzer told CNN that the 73-year-old man, known as Mr. F., admitted holding his daughter, Elisabeth F., 42, hostage in the windowless cell and fathering seven children by her.

"The mother had memories and got used to the situation," Polzer told a press conference Monday afternoon. "The others knew nothing else."

The main question reverberating from the small Austrian town: how could a man keep his daughter locked in his basement for 24 years, where she gave birth to seven of his children while her mother and three of those children lived upstairs without an inkling of the horrors in the cellar?

Mr. F. explained Elisabeth's disappearance by saying she had run away from home, a story backed up by letters he forced Elisabeth to write, including one that begged her parents not to look for her.

Other letters made it seem the missing daughter had left the three children on the parents' doorstep to rear -- when in fact they had been born in captivity in the family's basement.

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more at the link



This is just unbelievable.

[Megahurtz]

13. Kill him.

Just fucking shoot him. I hope someone uses their throwaway.

[leftynyc]

18. Unfortunately there is no death penalty in

Europe. From what I have read, the longest term he is looking at is 15 years - 9 years less than he kept them captive. Maybe someone will take justice into their own hands.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[ToughLuck]

15. He needs to die. I can't imagine this poor lady...heart breaking!

[GetTheRightVote]

16. this is one of the most horrible stories written/reported, what a terrible human being

this man/father must be, put him away and a cell with no lights and only water plus a bit of food until he dies alone.

[Psephos]

17. A strong rebuttal to those who see evil as an abstraction

Fritzl is a pure sociopath and by definition, an extreme case of mental illness.

Nothing can repair him or the harm he has caused. He must be removed from society and placed in supervision for the criminally insane. I hope that something can be done to comfort his family/prisoners. Meanwhile, they have done something for all of us by reminding us to give thanks for sunlight and autonomy and the simple pleasures.