woman tells of 24 years of imprisonment n rape by her father
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Horror in a cellar: woman tells of 24 years of imprisonment and rape by her father
- Police told how she gave birth to seven children
- Arrested 73-year-old reveals code to secret door
People watch at the back of a house where a 73-year-old man allegedly locked up his daughter in a basement for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, in Amstetten, Austria. Photograph: Johannes Simon/Getty Images
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."
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/28/austria.internationalcrime?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
- Police told how she gave birth to seven children
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Holy shit 24ears.
If me i bite tounge and die liao. -
this is sad......
yet amazing...... -
This is so terrible. sigh...
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I think the one and only question is what happen to those who known the family? nobody rise questions when they have disappear?
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DNA: Sex captor fathered daughter's children
- DNA confirms that Austrian man fathered six children with his daughter
- Josef Fritzl kept daughter imprisoned under home for 24 years, police say
- Fritzl, who appeared in court Tuesday, has admitted guilt and faces 15 years
Friend of Fritzl's wife says she never knew something was so wrong there
AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- DNA testing has confirmed that Josef Fritzl, who police say confessed to holding his daughter hostage in underground rooms for more than two decades, fathered seven children with her, an Austrian law enforcement official said Tuesday.
"It is clear now (that) the six children of Elisabeth Fritzl, that she bore ... that this is the father, who is now 73 years old, something that we, from a criminal point of view, we have never met such a case. Astonishing," said Franz Polzer, director of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.
The seventh child died shortly after birth, and Fritzl told police he burned the infant's body in an oven, authorities said. Though its body was not available for DNA testing, police said it was a twin to one of the six tested.
Fritzl's DNA also was found on a letter sent to the Fritzl family that was made to look like it was from his daughter, Elisabeth, Polzer said.
Authorities said Fritzl sent other such letters over the years, leading the family to believe that Elisabeth was a runaway who had abandoned three of her children on the Fritzls' doorstep.
Those three children lived in the home above the cellar prison -- in which the three other children remained -- with Fritzl and his wife, Elisabeth's mother, Rosemarie.
Authorities said it doesn't appear that Rosemarie Fritzl was involved in or knew about her husband's activities.
She had talked to her friend Gertrude Baumgarten about one of the infants left on her doorstep.
"She said she believed her daughter had had the child with someone from the cult and couldn't take care of it. That's why Elisabeth laid it in front of the door.
"And [Rosemarie] said, 'Well, what can we do? We have to take the child in,' " Baumgarten said.
"She never knew that something was so very wrong there," she said, adding, "I believe it would be fitting to get a rope and hang him. Such a pig!"
Reports have surfaced in The Times of London and Austria's Presse that Fritzl was convicted of sexual assault in the 1960s, but there is nothing in his record to confirm this, District Governor Hans Heinz Lenze said. He added, however, that records are expunged after a certain number of years.
Prosecutors are checking back records to try to find this information, said Gerhard Sedlacek, prosecutor for the state of Poelten.
The Times of London quotes a 50-year-old neighbor who said that when he was 10, he remembered "how we children were afraid to play near Mr. F's house because of the rumors that he had raped a woman and spent some time in jail for it."
Fritzl led police to the cellar, which has about 100 square feet, on Sunday. A day later, he confessed to raping Elisabeth, now 42, and keeping her and their children in captivity in the cellar for years, police said.
Josef Fritzl was able to convince social service workers, friends and family that Elisabeth had run away in 1984, when she was about 18. Police describe him as an authoritarian figure, forbidding anyone in the family from entering the cellar.
In the cellar with Elisabeth were a daughter, Kerstin, 19; and two sons, Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5.
The three children held in the cellar in the town of Amstetten were still in the hospital Tuesday after their horrific ordeal.
The eldest of the children, Kerstin Fritzl, was in an induced coma.
Stefan and Felix are said to be doing "surprisingly well and in good health," considering that they had never been exposed to sunlight, CNN's Phil Black said. The boys are still undergoing medical treatment, he added.
Police said Tuesday that they have searched other properties belonging to Fritzl to make sure there are no other similar situations. Nothing has been found, they said.
Also Tuesday, a judge ordered Fritzl to remain in custody. He appeared calm and showed no emotion in court, according to an Austrian reporter present.
Some neighbors have lived in the area for 30 years and not only knew Josef Fritzl but also knew Elisabeth as a youngster, said Maria Otto Pries, who has lived in the area only three years and did not know the family.
"Many people have shaken his hand and said hello and gone to the same bakery with him and had a coffee with him at the coffee shop," she said. "The scarier fact is that it happened just around the corner."
Thomas Birgfellner, a reporter with Austrian broadcaster ORF, said there was a strong belief that, with his expertise as a former electrical engineer, Fritzl -- who installed an electronic security door in the cellar -- must have had help from other people.
"Everyone has said he could not do it alone. He could not install it alone, and now they have to investigate if there were some other people who assisted him," Birgfellner said.
It was Kerstin's serious condition that led to the unraveling of the case over the weekend, forcing Josef Fritzl -- who she thought was her grandfather -- to take her to the hospital in Amstetten, west of Vienna.
Kerstin's mother, Elisabeth, begged Josef Fritzl to take the teen to the hospital.
Josef told his wife that their missing daughter had dropped off ailing Kerstin on the doorstep with a note asking that they get her medical care.
Josef took her to the town's clinic with the note, but doctors needed more information to determine why the young woman was unconscious and having violent convulsions.
So they contacted police, who asked the local media to report on Kerstin's situation in an effort to find the missing mother.
Elisabeth and her two sons saw the reports on the television provided to them in their living quarters, Polzer said, and "they desperately pleaded with their father so they could be taken [to the hospital] ... [and] do something for the 19-year-old."
Josef Fritzl agreed and took all three of the remaining captives out of the basement, explaining to Rosemarie and the rest of the family that Elisabeth had reappeared with her two children after 24 years.
He took them to the hospital, and authorities there realized that something was wrong. Police picked up both Josef and Elisabeth on Saturday near the hospital and brought them into the station for questioning.
Josef would not talk to police, but Elisabeth began to tell her story once she was convinced that she would never have to see her father again and that her children would be safe.
She told police that her father began sexually abusing her at age 11.
On August 8, 1984, weeks before she was reported missing, her father enticed her into the basement, where he drugged her, put her in handcuffs and locked her in a room, she told police.
source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/29/austria.cellar/
- DNA confirms that Austrian man fathered six children with his daughter
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this is bizarre
who prepared their meals all these years?
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The beast brought it to them
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the mother doesn't know?
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Originally posted by TehJarVu:
this is bizarre
who prepared their meals all these years?
there's a kitchen..
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the father eyebrow damn scary
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This is a sick world.
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i only alwaysdisturbed....
she's psychologically extremelydisturbed.
ooooo....
within this 24 years she didn't fall ill seriously?
