|
|
| Newpaper Articles -- No Discussion Please - Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Next |
| View previous topic
:: View next topic |
SavannahStar
 Posted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:10 am |
|
|
|
Newpaper Articles -- No Discussion Please
The Times April 29, 2008
Austria: incest father has sex assault conviction
The Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter and fathered a hidden incestuous family with her had previously been convicted of sexual assault, The Times has learnt.
Josef F has at least one other conviction, for arson, and he allegedly spent time in prison in the late 1960s. Austrian prosecutors said that they were aware of the allegations and trying to trace the records in court archives.
The revelation came as Austria struggled to come to terms with how the appalling abused of his children could have remained undiscovered for almost a quarter of a century.
According to most of their neighbours, Mr F and his wife Rosemarie appeared to be upright citizens – and commendable in the way that they had raised the three children dumped on their doorstep by the daughter who had walked out of their lives to join some kind of cult 24 years earlier.
"They appeared normal, just like any other family," Guenter Prameiter, who runs a bakery just down the street, said.
Mrs F "always looked after the kids so well, taking them to school. We said ‘It’s incredible what she manages to do at her age’," remarked another neighbour.
"They had a swimming pool in the garden. We would hear them [the children] laughing, the three of them," said a third.
But none of them – until now – had the faintest idea of the horrors taking place in the makeshift dungeon that Mr F had built beneath his nondescript house in the industrial town of Amstetten, in eastern Austria.
Mr F, 73, an electrical engineer with various other business interests, confessed to the police yesterday that he had held his daughter Elisabeth, 42, captive in three windowless underground rooms ever since she disappeared in 1984. He also admitted that he had fathered seven children by her, though he insisted that no force was involved.
He confessed also that he had tossed the body of one of those seven children into the building’s furnace after the baby died at birth.
The police said that three of the children "never saw sunlight" until they were freed over the weekend.
The dungeon in which they lived was so small that the older ones had to watch as his father delivered his daughter’s subsequent children. Presumably they also had to watch as he had intercourse with his daughter to beget them – she claims that he repeatedly raped her – and regularly beat her. The dungeon contained one padded room, its walls and floor covered in rubber, the purpose of which is still unclear.
Yesterday the police described the revelations as "one of Austria’s all-time worst crimes". Guenther Platter, the country’s Interior Minister, called it "unfathomable".
The Osterreich newspaper called it "the worst crime of all time". Despite that, the police said that Mr F, whom they described as "domineering, aggressive and tyrannical", appeared unrepentant.
Mrs F allegedly knew nothing of the evil that was taking place in the basement of her own home. "You have to imagine that this woman’s world fell apart," Hans-Heinz Lenze, a local official, said.
Her ignorance seems almost incredible given her husband’s previous record, the extraordinary stories that he asked her to believe and the fact that he built the basement cell quite literally under her nose and kept his secret family there for more than two decades.
Mr F asked his wife to believe that Elisabeth simply walked out of their lives on August 28, 1984, when she was 18. That was the date on which he allegedly sedated and handcuffed her and locked her in the cellar. A month later he produced a letter – written by her, but dictated by him – in which she asked her parents not to search for her.
Three times in subsequent years, in 1993, 1994 and 1997, Mr F produced babies that Elisabeth had allegedly left on the doorstep of their house, with notes saying that she could not look after them. Mrs F duly raised the three children.
All that time Elisabeth and her expanding family were living in the dungeon. It was hidden behind a 1m-high iron door that could be opened with a numbered code which only Mr F knew. The door was itself concealed behind shelves, and the police said that he used to tell his captive children that if anything happened to him, then they would die in the dungeon.
The police yesterday released photographs showing the door opening onto the narrowest of passages, a living area, a small kitchen and two bedrooms. The ceilings were no more than 5ft 6in high. Elisabeth had done her best to decorate them, with a toy elephant on top of a medicine cabinet and stickers showing a chubby butterfly and smiling octopus on the walls. There were hot plates for cooking and the prisoners’ only contact with the outside world came via a radio, television and a video recorder.
It was the television that finally helped Elisabeth to escape. Her father had apparently taken her eldest daughter out of the dungeon after she became seriously ill and delivered her to hospital.
Elisabeth saw a televised appeal from the hospital for the girl’s mother to come forward, and she persuaded her father to release her. The police then picked up Mr F and Elisabeth close to the hospital on Saturday. Mr F gave the police the code to his secret dungeon Asked why Mrs F was not being investigated, Colonel Franz Polzer, a police spokesman, replied: "Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?"
A spokesman at the local school which Elisabeth’s other three children attended described Mrs F as "the perfect grandmother" and a member of the Parents’ Association who helped to organise school events. Elisabeth said that she and her children got food and clothing only from her father and her mother was not involved.
Mr F had seven other children by his wife – six daughters and a son aged between 37 and 51. They, too, have denied knowing anything of their sister’s fate, as have the occasional tenants who rented a flat in the house.
But it appears that some people did know that Mr F had a shady past. A spokeswoman for a company where he was employed as an engineer and procurement manager during the 1970s told The Times: "He did an excellent job, but there was always something uneasy about him as it was widely known that he had served time in prison for a sexual offence."
The Times also found several neighbours who said that he was known as a former sex offender by older members of the community.
One 50-year-old said: "I was 10 at the time, but I remember how we children were afraid to play near Mr F’s house because of the rumours that he had raped a woman and spent some time in jail for it."
Despite Mr F’s record, it appears that he was able to persuade the social services, friends and family that Elisabeth had run away in 1984 and subsequently left the three children on his doorstep.
Forensic experts spent yesterday searching the dungeon, and took away boxes of evidence. Mr F was questioned by a judge who extended his custody for two weeks until the investigation has been completed.
He is likely to face a string of charges including manslaughter or murder, rape, kidnapping, coercion and grievous bodily harm.
Colonel Polzer, the police spokesman, described Mr F as "extremely fit and in excellent physical condition" despite his age, as well as "extraordinarily sexually potent".
Elisabeth and two of her captive children were last night being treated in a psychiatric hospital near Amstetten, and were said to be in surprisingly good condition, except for the need to adapt to daylight.
One official said: "As we were driving with one of the boys towards the hospital he told me he was very happy to be driven in a car. He had seen cars on TV and always wanted to have a ride in one.
"I could not detect any obvious mental or physical malfunctions in him or his sister."
In addition to his electrical engineering, Mr F also dabbled in property management and retail underwear. He owned a second two-storey house in an Amstetten suburb which he was planning to tear down to make way for a block of flats and offices with an underground garage. Neighbours had taken legal action to try and stop the project.
The case has inevitably provoked comparisons with that of Natascha Kampusch, the ten-year-old girl who was snatched from another small town in Austria in 1998 and imprisoned in a basement in a Vienna suburb for the next eight years.
Ms Kampusch yesterday offered to use her experience to counsel Mr F’s victims. A spokesman told The Times: "Ms Kampusch was shaken by the latest revelation. Based on the experience she had to go through, she is prepared to meet the victims and share her experience with them and offer her assistance. She is also prepared to provide financial support."
|
|
**SuperStar**
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 20784
Location: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
| gwen
Posted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:28 am |
|
|
|
Austria shocked by incest captive case
AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Austria was still coming to terms with its second horrific abduction case in two years on Tuesday as the 73-year-old who admitted holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children appeared in court.
Josef Fritzl, a retired electrical engineer, faces a possible 15 years in prison if charged and convicted of rape.
In court, he appeared calm and showed no emotion, according to an Austrian reporter present. He spoke, saying that he wanted to redeem himself.
The female judge presiding said he would be kept in custody, the reporter said, but gave no indication for how long.
Fritzl was on Monday moved from the town of Amstetten -- where he kept his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and three of her children in the cellar of his house -- to the courthouse in nearby St. Poelten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria.
The central European country's newspapers were filled with details of the case, which has shocked the nation.
"Horror father breaks silence," "Hiding a double life without wife knowing" and "Soundproof dungeon behind 300kg steel door" were headlines in Die Kronen Zeitung.
It also ran a story questioning how people could survive deprived of sunlight for so long.
Die Presse went with "The man who deceived the world" and also accused authorities of allowing the atrocities to happen.
Police are searching other properties owned by Fritzl to make sure he was not keeping another captives, The Associated Press reported.
However, police said it was unlikely he would have had time to maintain other such cellar cells, AP said.
Thomas Birgfellner, a reporter with Austrian broadcaster ORF, said there was strong belief that 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 told CNN.
CNN's Phil Black reported from Amstetten that Austrian police were trying to deflect comparisons with the case of Natascha Kampusch, who 18 months ago escaped from a basement cell outside Vienna in which she had been held since she was kidnapped as a 10-year old on her way to school.
"There are similarities on the surface but police say this case is more extreme, and they do not believe that there is anything darker or more rotten here in Austria than in any other country," Black said.
He said the police were now trying to work out how Fritzl was able to deceive the authorities and his neighbors for so long.
"They are trying to work out how he was able to construct this cellar with nobody noticing, how he was able to feed this hidden family. This why they are being so public, making his name and images available so people can come forward to help," Black said.
The three children held in the cellar were still in hospital on Tuesday having treatment following their horrific ordeal.
The eldest of the children, 19-year-old Kerstin Fritzl, was in an induced coma.
It was her serious condition that led to the unraveling of the case at the weekend when her alleged father Josef -- who she thought was her grandfather -- was forced to take her to the hospital in Amstetten, west of Vienna.
Elisabeth said one of her seven children died at an early age to due inadequate care, while three were adopted by Josef and his wife Rosemarie and lived upstairs in the house.
Three were kept with her in the cramped cellar: Kerstin and sons Stefan, 18, and Felix, 5.
The boys are said to be doing "surprisingly well and in good health" in the circumstances but are still undergoing medical treatment, Black said.
Albert Reiter, head of the hospital's intensive care unit, confirmed to CNN that the children were still receiving "intensive medical treatment."
The breakthrough in the case began a week ago when Kerstin Fritzl fell seriously ill with convulsions. See how Austrians are troubled by the case. »
Her mother Elisabeth begged Josef to take her to a hospital, which he did.
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 100-square-foot living quarters, police spokesman Franz 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 an absence of 24 years.
He took them to the hospital and, at some point, authorities there realized 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 she would never have to see her father again, and that her children would be safe.
"The young woman saw the window for her freedom and she entrusted herself to the criminal officer and began to talk about the 24 years in captivity," Polzer said.
Her story, Polzer said, was "a description that even for the experienced criminal officers (was) almost devastating."
She told police 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.
For the next 24 years, she was constantly raped by her father, resulting in seven children, six of whom survived, she said, according to the police statement.
She told police she gave birth to twins in 1996, but one of the babies died a few days later as a result of neglect, and Josef Fritzl removed the infant's body and burned it.
Elisabeth told police that only her father supplied her and her children with food and clothing, and that she did not think her mother, Rosemarie, knew anything about their situation.
Police continued to question Josef Fritzl and he led police to the underground cellar on Sunday. A day later, he confessed to raping his daughter, keeping her and their children in captivity, and burning the body of the dead infant in an oven in the house.
Pictures of the cellar released by the police show a narrow hallway that a normal-sized adult could barely walk down. The hallway leads to a tiny bathroom, spotless and sparsely decorated with tiny but colorful rugs and decals.
A three-foot-high hidden door led to the rooms in the cellar accessible only by an electronic passcode that Josef possessed and provided to police. Polzer said the door "was very, very well concealed and you wouldn't have been able to find it even if you were looking for it."
Josef Fritzl, who police described as an authoritarian figure, forbade anyone in the family from entering the cellar.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/29/austria.cellar/index.html
Timeline
1977: Elisabeth Fritzl claims she was first abused by her father Josef when she was 11 years old.
1984: Elisabeth is allegedly lured into the cellar of her house and drugged and handcuffed by her father. She is forced to write letters saying she has run away from home.
1988: Her first child, Kerstin, is born.
1989: Elisabeth gives birth to her first son, Stefan.
1993: A baby, nine-month-old Lisa, is left on the doorstep of the Fritzl house, with a letter asking Josef and his wife Rosemarie to look after her.
1994: Another child, Monika, arrives with another similar note and is adopted by the Fritzls.
1996: Elisabeth gives birth to twins, but one dies after three days. Josef allegedly burnt the body.
1997: Alexander, the surviving twin, is moved upstairs to join rest of family.
2003: Another letter from Elisabeth arrives saying she had a second son, Felix, the previous year. he is also raised in the cellar.
2008:
April 19: Kerstin is taken to hospital after falling serious ill, and doctors discover that her grandfather is in fact her father.
April 20-27: Josef releases Elisabeth along with Stefan and Felix and tells wife they have chosen to return home.
April 26: Police pick up Josef and Elisabeth near the Amstetten hospital where Kerstin is being treated.
April 27: Josef admits his guilt following Elisabeth's statement.
April 28: Police search the family's house and discover cramped cellar with special security door.
April 29: Josef Fritzl appears in court.
|
|
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14367
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| gwen
Posted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:18 am |
|
|
|
DNA 'backs Austrian incest claim'
DNA evidence supports a man's confession that he fathered his daughter's children while imprisoning her for 24 years, Austrian police say.
Lower Austria police chief Franz Polzer said Josef Fritzl completely deceived his wife, his family and neighbours in Amstetten, northern Austria.
He said the 73-year-old had forced his daughter, Elisabeth, to write letters saying she had run away.
Mr Fritzl was earlier detained for a further 14 days by a regional court.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr Polzer said police investigators had found clear genetic evidence that Elisabeth's children had been fathered by the accused.
"You can be sure that this man left nothing undone in order to deceive the family, his wife, the relatives, the children and everybody around him," he said.
"He had no scruples to use every possible means to deceive the public and cover up his crime," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7373689.stm
|
|
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14367
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| gwen
Posted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 9:29 am |
|
|
|
Incest father remanded in custody after insisting he acted alone
Last updated at 15:10pm on 29th April 2008
The evil father who locked up his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered her seven children has insisted he acted alone, police said today.
Josef Fritzl has told detectives he was not helped to keep his daughter Elisabeth and three of their children hidden in his cramped basement.
But police are not yet convinced he is telling the truth and are investigating how he could have bought food and clothes for them without anyone suspecting.
The 73-year-old pensioner, who has now been confirmed as the father of all Elisabeth's children, was today remanded in custody for two weeks.
At a press conference in Austria after the brief hearing, police said: "He is saying that he worked alone, that he acted alone, in making sure his daughter was kept in that cellar but the authorities are not sure that is what happened.
"As a result they are now carrying out further inquiries. They want to know where the food came from to look after those children and where the clothes came from."
Experts have dubbed Fritzl a "ruler" who must have been mad to have carried out such a campaign of abuse against his own family.
Austrian psychiatrist Reinhard Haller said he appears to have been motivated by pronounced narcissism and a drive to exercise his control over others.
He said: "This man must have been insane and must have felt he was far superior to others."
Court psychiatrist Sigrun Rossmanith said Fritzl essentially had two personalities - "the underground one, and the one that existed above".
"He was obviously a ruler. If the cellar was taboo for his wife and children, and they heard that over and over, then they didn't dare to check on anything," she said.
"If someone has power and forces it on someone else, then his word is like the word of God."
The pensioner has not yet shown any remorse for his actions, according to prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek.
At today's hearing, Mr Sedlacek said Fritzl was "completely calm, completely without emotion".
But his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said: "He is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken.
Asked whether he showed any remorse, he added: "I cannot say at this point."
The revelation today that Fritzl had a criminal record will increase the anger that his behaviour could have gone undetected by social services for almost a quarter of a century.
It also indicates his wife Rosemarie must have been aware - at least to some degree - of her husband's sinister side.
Incredibly, it is still claimed she knew nothing about the secret dungeon beneath her home and the unimaginable horror going on under her nose.
Police in Amstetten are now trying to unravel why Fritzl, 73, was driven to lock up his daughter and subject her to decades of abuse.
The retired electrician faces charges of incest, abduction and imprisonment and could serve 15 years in jail if convicted.
He appeared in cout today in St Poelten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria, and was detained in investigative custody for two weeks.
During the brief hearing, the pensioner said nothing to the magistrate.
Prison officials said the pensioner was calm last night but that he had been placed in a large, two-person cell as a precaution to try to stop him killing himself.
Investigators were searching the 60-square metre cellar beneath Fritz's two-storey home today.
Forensic experts in white uniforms and gloves have been carrying out boxed of evidence from the building, which is on a busy street with shops and also home to several other families.
"Down there it is just chaos at the moment. We have to go over every detail very carefully," Franz Prucher, head of security in Lower Austria, said.
Police are desperate to determine how Fritzl's victims could have been hidden away for so long from their neighbours and everyone else in the town, which has a population of just 23,000.
They are said to be examining the padded walls of the cellar to work out whether the children's screams could be heard by neighbours.
Neighbours have told police they heard nothing but many are incredulous that they could have failed to spot anything unusual, not least because over the years Fritzl had built extension after extension to his cellar.
"The community of Amstetten should drown in shame ... The neighbours are turning a blind eye," the Oesterreich newspaper wrote in an editorial.
Meanwhile, residents refuse to believe Fritzl could have acted alone, while others cannot believe that the "normal" family were hiding such a horrendous secret.
Anita Fabian, a teacher in the town, said: "How is it possible that no one knew anything for years? This was not possible without accomplices."
Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery down the street from the Fritzls' home said the couple were regular customers.
"They appeared normal, just like any other family," he said. "I'm totally shocked. This was next door. It's terrible."
Yesterday, Austrian police released details of Fritzl's secret family and the life he forced them to lead in the cramped cellar beneath his home.
His daughter Elisabeth had seven children in all during her 24 years in incarceration, all of whom were delivered by her father at their house.
Police said that when she had twin boys 12 years ago and one died, Fritzl merely tossed the body in a furnace used to heat the grey concrete villa.
He raised three of the children with his 60-year-old wife Rosemarie, while the remaining three lived with their mother behind a steel security door in the basement.
Apart from 42-year-old Elisabeth, he and Rosemarie had another six children of their own, now all grown-up, making him a father of 14.
Chillingly, details have emerged of a second house owned by Fritzl a mile away. It, too has an excavated cellar with stone bath and a 3ft hacksaw on the wall.
The man police described as "dynamic, bossy and authoritarian" faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of raping his daughter. His victims and wife are receiving psychiatric care at a secret location.
Her oldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin, was still fighting for life in hospital last night. It was her arrival there, suffering from a mystery condition, which led to the discovery of the cellar dungeon.
But the youngest of the freed children, five-year-old Felix, told carers of his joy at the simple pleasure of riding in a car after spending his entire life underground.
"He said how happy he was and how fantastic it was to ride in a real car," said Heinz Lenze, the local mayor.
Mr Lenze says he is convinced that Fritzl acted without his wife's knowledge.
"Is it possible she knew?" he asked. "For me it is beyond imagination that she would knowingly put up with her husband having a new family with their own daughter."
Rosemarie apparently accepted her husband's explanation that Elisabeth had run off to join a religious cult at the age of 18 - and that over the intervening years dumped three babies on their doorstep with notes saying she could not cope.
She and her husband formally adopted the three children - Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12 - bringing them up as their own.
The three were apparently unaware of their mother's existence, let alone that their siblings Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix were living below them.
It remains a mystery why Fritzl allowed three children to live a relatively normal existence while the others were kept locked up behind a steel doorway.
Neighbours said the three kept above ground were well-balanced and polite members of the police sports club and voluntary fire brigade.
Their grandmother, according to many, was a pillar of the community, baking cakes for fetes and becoming an active member of the parent teachers' association at their private school.
One of his sons by Rosemarie has told police that he was "tyrannical" and a "very controlling" man who even in his older years ruled the house with a rod of iron.
Franz Polzer, who is heading the police investigation, said Fritzl was "an extraordinarily sexually potent man".
He added: "If you look at him today, you would hardly believe he was capable of doing these things."
Asked why he thought the four in the cellar had not tried to escape over the years, the detective said they were all physically weak.
"You have to put yourself into the situation of these people. They led a completely different life to ours, they do not know what we know. These children were born into the jail, they knew nothing else."
Elisabeth told police that her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and some years later, on August 28, 1984, he sedated her, handcuffed her and locked her in the cellar. When she became pregnant, he delivered the babies.
Social workers admit regularly seeing Josef and Rosemarie Fritzl after they adopted three of Elisabeth's children but insist they had noticed nothing unusual during routine visits.
Jiosef Schloegl, who had responsibility for the adopted children, admitted that rules had been broken because they had been formally handed over to Fritzl without the approval of their missing mother Elisabeth.
He conceded that there had been questions over the whole procedure at the time but it had been finally approved after they found no irregularities.
At Fritzl's other property in the town, 80 miles west of Vienna, neighbours said he bought it several years ago and had initially planned to demolish it and build an office block but planning approval was rejected.
One said: "You would see him two or three years ago with the children and they would play in the garden. Sometimes you would see Josef's grown-up children there too."
News of Fritzl's sickening quarter-century of abuse has stunned a nation still shocked by the scandal of Natascha Kampusch, who was held captive by a paedophile for eight years in a Vienna suburb.
Miss Kampusch yesterday offered to help the victims, saying: "I can imagine that it is very difficult both for the mother of the children as well as for the wife of the perpetrator to get through this."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=562685&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
|
|
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14367
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| gwen
Posted:
Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:15 am |
|
|
|
Kin In Incest-Imprisonment Case Meet
Austrian Family Members Victimized By Dad Who Imprisoned Daughter, Fathered 7 Kids With Her
AMSTETTEN, Austria, April 29, 2008
(AP) Members of the Austrian family victimized by a man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her have had an "astonishing" meeting, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities said the daughter, most of her children whom suspect Josef Fritzl fathered through incest, and Fritzl's wife met each other Sunday morning at a clinic where they have been getting psychiatric treatment and counseling.
"It was astonishing how easily it happened - how the mother and grandmother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday.
Kepplinger said the family members interacted very naturally - even though the three children who lived upstairs with the grandparents had never met their siblings in the windowless cell.
Officials said one of the children who is receiving medical treatment at another hospital was not part of the gathering.
Word of the reunion came as police announced that DNA tests confirmed Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving children he had with his daughter.
Police also said they combed through Fritzl's other properties but found no other hidden windowless cells like the one where he had held his daughter - now 42 - captive since she was 18.
Police said Fritzl confessed Monday to holding the daughter captive, sexually abusing her, fathering her children and tossing the body of one child who died in infancy into a furnace.
Officials had said Fritzl 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.
But prosecutors in Lower Austria said Tuesday they were looking into the possibility of charging Fritzl with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the infant death. Murder in Austria is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Investigators say they believe his wife, with whom he had seven children, was unaware that the daughter she believed ran away to join a religious cult in 1984 was living as a prisoner beneath her feet.
Fritzl's lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said his client also was under psychiatric care and "is really hit by this. He is very serious, but he is emotionally broken."
But prosecutor Gerhard Sedlacek said Fritzl was "completely calm, completely without emotion" when he was formally placed in pretrial detention Tuesday.
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 Amstetten were puzzled as to how the Fritzl case could go undetected 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."
Regarding the apartment building that Fritzl owned and lived in, the town's authorities authorized the construction of an addition with a basement in 1978, city spokesman Hermann Gruber told the Austria Press Agency. He said inspectors examined the project in 1983 - the year before the young woman went missing - and nothing looked suspicious.
Police said the surviving children are three boys and three girls, ranging in age from 5 to 19. Officials said three of the secret children - aged 19, 18 and 5 - "never saw sunlight" until they were freed a few days ago.
Police released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept them from escaping.
Three of the children lived with the grandparents. Fritzl and his wife registered those children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997.
Leopold Etz, a regional police official, told APA that Fritzl apparently chose which of the children would live upstairs with him and his wife according to whether they were "crybabies."
Officials said social workers made regular visits to the family but 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.
The case unfolded after the eldest of the secret children, a 19-year-old woman, was found unconscious and gravely ill on April 19 in the building and was taken to a hospital.
Hospital officials said the 19-year-old remained in critical condition Tuesday because of the effects of lack of oxygen, and was undergoing dialysis.
Amstetten Mayor Herbert Katzengrueber told the AP in an interview that Fritzl was personable and well-liked, and that the town had honored the suspect and his wife in 2006 for their 50th wedding anniversary.
Katzengrueber said he was at a loss to explain how such an atrocity could happen.
"No one can really explain it," he said. "I am appalled and saddened that such a thing could happen in my hometown. ... These have been awful and sad days."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/29/world/main4053418.shtml
|
|
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14367
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| SavannahStar
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:22 am |
|
|
|
Incest family 'faces years in therapy'
Story Highlights
Austrian family held captive in a cellar will take years to recover, doctors say
Family are undergoing treatment at a local psychiatric clinic
Children kept underground may never lead normal lives, psychiatrist warns
Family have been offered opportunity to adopt new identities
(CNN) -- The woman and children held captive in a cellar for years by their incestuous father will take years to recover from their disturbing ordeal, doctors warned Wednesday as the family at the center of the case remained in psychiatric care.
Members of the Fritzl family will also be offered the chance to adopt new identities in an effort to help them lead normal lives, officials said.
Hans-Heinz Lenze, the head of local social services said the family was "doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances" and said any change of identity would be the family's decision.
Elizabeth Fritzl -- now 42 -- spent more than two decades in the windowless basement after being drugged, handcuffed and locked up by her father, Josef Fritzl, as an 18-year-old. Repeatedly raped, she gave birth to seven children by Fritzl, one of whom died as an infant.
Three of the children -- Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5 -- remained imprisoned underground with their mother. The other three lived in an apartment upstairs with Fritzl and his wife who believed Elizabeth had abandoned them after running away from home.
Elizabeth and five of the children were continuing to receive treatment at a local clinic near Amstetten after being reunited on Sunday. Kerstin, whose hospitalization at the weekend finally brought the family's plight to the attention of authorities, remained in a coma at a nearby hospital.
"It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger said. But Kepplinger warned that the family would require extensive counseling.
"We're talking of 20 years of darkness, incest and its effects and other illnesses they might have suffered from."
Kepplinger said the two sets of children were tentatively getting to know one another, adding that the two boys who had lived underground had an unusual way of communicating with each other.
A policeman who had accompanied the boys to hospital after their discovery on Sunday said the pair had "screamed with excitement" during the car journey as they experienced the outside world for the first time.
"The two boys appeared overawed by the daylight they had never experienced before," said Chief Inspector Leopold Etz. "The real world was completely alien to them... We had to drive very slowly with them because they cringed at every car light and every bump. It was as if we had just landed on the moon."
In an interview with the Austrian newspaper, Oesterreich, psychiatrist Max Friedrich, who treated the abducted teenager Natascha Kampusch, estimated it would take "between five and eight years" for the children to recover from their experiences.
Another psychologist, Bernd Prosser, told Austrian television that it would be impossible for the four held prisoner underground to lead normal lives. "I am afraid it is too late for that."
Kampusch, the Austrian girl abducted as a 10-year-old and held captive in a basement for more than eight years until she escaped in 2007, also offered her help to the family on Tuesday, but questioned the decision to move them from the cellar into psychiatric care.
"Pulling them abruptly out of this situation, without transition, to hold them and isolating them to some extent, it can't be good for them," said Kampusch, now 20, in an interview with Austrian TV station Puls 4.
"I believe it might have been even better to leave them where they were, but that was probably impossible. This case is not like mine, where that was not my environment. They were born there and I can imagine that there is a strong attachment to that place."
|
|
**SuperStar**
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 20784
Location: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| SavannahStar
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:23 am |
|
|
|
Austrian family in incest case hold 'astonishing' reunion
Story Highlights
Austrian family terrorized by decades of incest meet for the first time
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
Natascha Kampusch, kidnap victim for eight years, offers her help to family
AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) -- Family members at the center of a bizarre incest and imprisonment case spanning 24 years have held an "astonishing" reunion, medical officials say.
"They met each other on Sunday morning," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger told reporters Tuesday. "And it is astonishing how easy it worked, that the children came together and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together."
Investigators say 73-year-old Josef Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in a cellar for 24 years. He raped her repeatedly, they say, and eventually fathered seven of her children.
Elisabeth and two of her children were reunited Sunday with three of her other children and her mother, Kepplinger said Tuesday. The three children and her mother lived in the home above the cellar.
Elisabeth's eldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin Fritzl, remains in hospital.
A seventh child died years ago, shortly after birth. Fritzl told police he burned the infant's body in a furnace.
The story of the family's imprisonment began to unravel a week ago, when Kerstin fell seriously ill with convulsions and was hospitalized.
Austrian police Wednesday denied reports that they were investigating possible links between Fritzl and the unsolved murder of a woman.
Franz Polzer, director of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said Fritzl had owned an Austrian hotel near wher a woman was found murdered. However, they were not investigating the decades-old incident at this stage.
Meanwhile, an Austrian girl who was held prisoner in a basement for eight years said the family faced a long period of adjustment. See how Austrians are troubled by the case »
Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped on her way to school in March 1998.
She escaped from a bunker below the house of Wolfgang Priklopil in a suburb of Vienna in August 2007. Priklopil killed himself by throwing himself under a train only hours later.
"Although they are now in a secret location, I believe it might have been even better to leave them where they were but that was probably impossible," she said of the Fritzl family Tuesday.
"Yes, because that was of course the environment they were used to and now they're somewhere else. Pulling them abruptly out of this situation, without transition, to hold them and isolating them to some extent, it can't be good for them."
Officials said Tuesday that DNA testing had confirmed Fritzl fathered the children.
His DNA also was found on a letter sent to the Fritzl family that was made to look like it was from his daughter, Elisabeth, said Franz Polzer, director of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs. See inside the 'House of horrors' »
Authorities said Fritzl sent other letters over the years, leading the family to believe that Elisabeth was a runaway who had abandoned three of her children on their doorstep. He dictated at least one of the letters to his daughter, they said.
Authorities said it did not appear that Fritzl's wife, Rosemarie, was involved in or knew about her husband's activities. She had talked to her friend, Gertrude Baumgarten, about one of the infants left outside the Fritzl home.
"She said she believed her daughter had had the child with someone from [a] cult and couldn't take care of it. That's why Elisabeth laid it in front of the door.
"And she 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, and added: "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, said District Governor Hans Heinz Lenze. He added, however, that records were expunged after a certain number of years.
Prosecutors were checking archives to find the 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. Fritzl'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 on Sunday. A day later, he confessed to raping his daughter, now 42, and keeping her and their children in captivity, police said.
Fritzl was able to convince social service workers, friends and family that Elisabeth had run away in 1984, when she was about 18. The father, who police described as an authoritarian figure, forbade anyone from entering the cellar.
In the cellar with Elisabeth were Kerstin and two sons, aged 5 and 18.
Lenze told the The Times that Elisabeth, her children and her grown siblings would be offered new lives and new names. "The name Fritzl has been muddied," he said. Watch a report of how the case unfolded. »
Police said Tuesday they had searched other properties belonging to Fritzl, to make sure there were no similar situations. Nothing had been found.
Also Tuesday, a judge ordered Fritzl to remain in custody. The judge did not say how long he will remain detained. He can be held for 14 days without formal charges while the investigation is under way, and that amount of time can be extended.
Some neighbors have lived in the area for 30 years, and not only knew 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."
|
|
**SuperStar**
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 20784
Location: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| SavannahStar
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:29 am |
|
|
|
Police Investigating Possible Link Between Austrian Incest Suspect, Unsolved Murder
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
AMSTETTEN, Austria —
Police say they are looking into possible links between the murder of a young woman and the man who has confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years and fathering her seven children.
A woman answering the telephone at police headquarters of Upper Austria province says investigators are looking into whether the incest suspect had anything to do with the murder of Martina Posch 22 years ago.
Posch's bound body was found on a shore of the Upper Austrian lake of Mondsee, 10 days after she disappeared. She was 17. An Austrian daily says the wife of the suspect owned an inn on the other side of the lake.
The woman refused to identify herself on the telephone Wednesday. She said only the head of the Upper Austria police could comment further.
The hospitalization of Kerstin Fritzl, which triggered the discovery that her family had been imprisoned and terrorized for decades was struggling for her life Wednesday, as authorities weighed the future of her five siblings.
Her condition was critical but stable, authorities said. The 19-year-old is one of seven children Josef Fritzl fathered with his daughter, who was held captive for 24 years in a dingy dungeon beneath his home.
Kerstin, who is an induced coma, is undergoing dialysis because of the effects of lack of oxygen. She was brought to the hospital unconscious and later suffered seizures. The fate of her family came to light after doctors, mystified by her ailment, publicly appealed for her mother to come forward because they needed her medical history.
Authorities were providing little information about Fritzl, 73, who has confessed to locking up daughter Elisabeth since she was 18 and repeatedly raping her. He said he incinerated the body of one of her children, who died in infancy.
Leopold Etz, chief of homicide for Lower Austria province, said authorities were confident that Fritzl acted alone.
"I think we can rule out accomplices," Etz told The Associated Press.
He said DNA tests confirmed that no other man entered the soundproof cellar rooms Fritzl made into a prison below his home. On Tuesday, tests confirmed Fritzl as the biological father of his daughter's six surviving children.
Fritzl led his wife to believe that Elisabeth had run away to join a religious cult when she disappeared, and authorities say there was no evidence the suspect's wife, Rosemarie, knew what was going on or was involved.
Elisabeth "never said that her mother was in the cellar," Etz said.
Fritzl brought three of the cellar-born children into his home, registering them officially as Elisabeth's abandoned children, but kept three more with their mother, cut off from the outside world. All, except Kerstin, have since been reunited with their mother and grandmother in an "astonishing" scene at a psychiatric clinic, authorities said Tuesday.
The father faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offenses under Austrian law. However, prosecutors said Tuesday they were investigating whether he can be charged with "murder through failure to act" in connection with the infant's death. That is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Amid the sordid details, precious little has been revealed about Fritzl's life or what led him to commit such a crime.
He was born April 9, 1935, in Amstetten, a working-class town 75 miles west of Vienna. He owned a number of properties in the region and paid his dues at the fisherman's club. Beside that, most neighbors or townsfolk remember only an affable, if unremarkable, fellow.
"Who is Josef Fritzl?" state broadcaster ORF asked in an online article. "All of Austria is asking this question, if not the entire world. What type of life did he previously lead, where did he work, how did he appear in public?"
It compiled a brief biography:
After mandatory schooling, Fritzl studied electric engineering at a polytechnic school and got a first job with steel company Voest. From 1969 to 1971 he worked for a construction material company in Amstetten, where he gained a reputation as an intelligent worker and a good technician. Then he went into the service industry and took over an inn 15 years ago.
Etz told The AP a police team was further investigating Fritzl's past, adding that it could take weeks to develop a clearer profile.
Rosemarie, Elisabeth and her five other children, remained in psychiatric care Wednesday. Clinic director Berthold Kepplinger said Tuesday they were doing "quite well" under the circumstances in the care of a team of specialists.
Authorities, meanwhile, were deliberating the future of Kerstin and her two brothers, aged 5 and 18, who effectively have no identities. Officials have discussed the possibility of providing new names to the children, who "never saw sunlight" until they were freed from the basement Saturday.
Kepplinger said the 18-year-old could read and write in a "reduced form."
He said Elisabeth has spoken "quite a lot" about what she went through in captivity, but he declined to provide details. "It was definitely dreadful for her and for her children," Kepplinger said.
The case started unfolding on April 19 when Kerstin was found unconscious and was taken to a hospital. After receiving a tip, police picked up Elisabeth and her father on Saturday. Fritzl freed the captive children the same day.
Authorities have declined to comment on who provided the tip.
Austria is still scandalized by the 2006 case of Natascha Kampusch, who was kidnapped at age 10 and imprisoned in a basement outside Vienna for more than eight years.
|
|
**SuperStar**
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 20784
Location: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:02 am |
|
|
|
Tenant who lived in incest house for 12 years heard knocking from sex dungeon 'but did nothing'
Last updated at 15:37pm on 30.04.08
A tenant who lived above the cellar where Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned by her father for 24 years described today how he heard strange noises in the night - and saw Josef Fritzl ferrying wheelbarrows of food under cover of darkness.
Alfred Dubanovsky, 42, who lived in the building in the Austrian town of Amstetten for 12 years, said Josef Fritzl spent his days in the cellar but banned anyone from going near it.
It never occurred to him anything was unusual about his landlord's behaviour but he now says he will regret doing nothing for the rest of his life.
Mr Dubanovsky said: "I wish to God that I could turn back the clock. The signs were all there but it was impossible for me to recognise them.
"Who would ever believe something so terrible was going on right under my feet? It is a regret I will have to live with for the rest of my life."
Mr Dubanovsky, who moved out a year ago and still works at a filling station near the house, spoke out after 200 residents held a rainy candle-lit vigil in support of the family in the town square last night.
"The outside world seems to think Amstetten is a terrible town and that people in the community do not care for one another. We want to show this is not true," said organiser Elisabeth Anderson.
He told The Sun: "Herr Fritzl banned any of the tenants of the eight flats from going anywhere near the cellar or back yard.
"He told us the cellar was protected with a sophisticated electronic alarm, and whoever went there would have their contract cancelled without notice.
"He used to take food and shopping down there in a wheelbarrow - always at night. At other times I remember I could sometimes hear a knocking from the cellar that I couldn't explain.
"I never in my wildest dreams thought he was behind anything like this. He spent every day in his cellar but I thought his behaviour was pretty normal."
He added: "He would fly into a panic at the merest mention of the police or the law. When I moved out there was a dispute over who should pay for repairs to a door.
"I threatened to sue. He went pale and caved in immediately."
It also emerged today that Fritzl, 73, first applied for planning permission for a cellar in 1978, saying it was to protect his family in case of nuclear attack.
"Elisabeth would have been 12 at the time - making it about a year after she says her father started abusing her.
In 1983 he was allowed to extend it to proper living quarters with rooms and running water. It was a year later that Elisabeth - now 42 - says her father lured her into the cellar, drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.
An investigator told The Sun: "Not only did Fritzl build a torture den to rape and assault his daughter - he went through official channels to do it.
"What kind of man follows council building laws to the letter only then to commit such a horrific crime? It shows how methodical and detached he is.
"The picture we are getting is that Fritzl planned his entrapment for years, maybe as soon as he started raping his daughter.
"We understand that Elisabeth was his favourite child because she was so pretty. He didn't want to lose her when she turned 18 so he spent six years building the dungeon to keep her for himself forever.
"It wasn't just a sudden idea to throw his daughter in the cellar - it was plotted for years."
Details also emerged about the condition of the three children held in the cellar with their mother.
Berthold Kepplinger, head of the clinic where they are being treated, said they could read and write, although not very well.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23481334-details/
Tenant+who+lived+in+incest+house+for+12+years
+heard+knocking+from+sex+dungeon+'but+did+nothing'/article.do
[There are pictures in the article; I didn't know how to bring them here.]
|
|
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1083
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:52 pm |
|
|
|
Suspicions Grow that Austrian Had Accomplices
By Julia Jüttner in Amstetten
There are still many unanswered questions in the Amstetten incest case. How was Josef F. able to keep his daughter locked up for 24 years without anyone finding out? Did he have accomplices? And what role did his wife Rosemarie play?
AP
Amstetten residents held a candlelit vigil on Tuesday evening.
The heavy steel door to the cellar, the secret location where the family of four lived and the systematic abuse of his own child (more...) which led to a total of seven births: There is growing suspicion in Austria that Josef F. could not have led his double life without the aid of accomplices.
"I never saw him with shopping bags," says Lina Angermeier (not her real name), who lived in the same house as the incestuous father from 1996 to 1997. The 32-year-old saleswoman told SPIEGEL ONLINE that, as a mother, she knows how much a family needs to live on. She finds it hard to imagine how F. was able to maintain this double life for 24 years without being noticed. "It could be that he smuggled groceries through the garage at the back of the house," she admits. "It's difficult to see that part of the property."
Angermeier's husband is a baker. He never noticed F. doing anything conspicuous, even though he arrived and left his apartment at very varied times of the day. She says they probably bumped into each other thousands of times on their way in or out of the house, saying hello or exchanging small talk. "And less than 10 meters away, a family was being held captive in a dungeon," she says. "You feel really bad, now that you know."
Like so many other people in Amstetten, Lina Angermeier believed all the lies down the years: That Elisabeth F. had fallen into the clutches of a sect or had become a prostitute, and that she had left three children on her parents' doorstep, because she either couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of them herself. "That was no secret," Angermeier says. "None of the tenants doubted that version of events. On the contrary, you felt sorry for the 'F' family because of their bad fortune."
Not just a brother of Elisabeth, but also one of her sisters, for a brief time, lived in the house at Ybbsstrasse 40. "They all seemed to get along well. The other kids came to visit a lot. Josef and Rosemarie F. were very loving and doted over their grandchildren. Elisabeth was portrayed as the black sheep of the family."
Lina Angermeier lived at that time in a small apartment on the first floor of the house with a view of the inner courtyard. She never went into the cellar, where the dungeon was hidden behind a secret door. "When I first looked at the apartment, Mrs. F. told me there was no cellar space for tenants. I didn't mind."
'The Worst Off'
"I'm especially sorry for Mrs. F.," Angermeier says. "She really made a lot of sacrifices for the sake of her grandchildren. She certainly would have done something, had she known. Unless Mr. F. had such a tight rein on her that she would never have dared. In any case, she is the worst off now. For her, the shame is the greatest -- to have shared her life with a person like that."
Local government official Hans-Heinz Lenze also says Rosemarie F. is in extremely bad shape.
Who else could Josef F. have told, except for her? Who else could have been complicit in helping him lead a double life over decades? "It certainly wasn't the son," Christian B., who lived in the building at the start of 2000, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "He acted as if he was the building's superintendent, but he never did very much. And just because he had a key to the cellar doesn't mean that he knew about the secret dungeon." The state office of criminal investigation in Lower Austria declined to comment on this issue.
PHOTO GALLERY: 24 YEARS IN A DUNGEON
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (9 Photos)
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,30997,00.html
Specialists from the federal police are currently investigating to what extent the complex door construction, with its electronic lock mechanism and numerical access code, was professionally installed. It is also not clear how a single individual could have mounted the heavy steel door.
However the investigators are ruling out the possibility that there might be another hideout or a new horror story to be uncovered. Chief investigator Franz Polzer said that police had searched other houses belonging to Josef F. In total, Josef F. owned five properties, some in Lower Austria, including a campsite complete with pub.
'This Is Not a Town of Criminals'
More than 200 people came to Amstetten's main square on Tuesday evening and lit candles for the victims of the family tragedy. The event was organized by a spontaneously founded citizens' initiative. Earlier the town's mayor had said: "We want to show that this is not a town of criminals and to counteract the impression of Amstetten which has arisen."
"We have been surrounded by shock, sadness, anger, perhaps even hate in the last few days," says local priest Peter Bösendorfer. "We were forced to recognize that there is something in our town that we cannot comprehend." The town's residents now had to "help and show solidarity so that a life is possible for the children and women."
That will not be easy, because in a town of 23,000 like Amstetten, "everyone constantly runs into each other," says Lina Angermeier. "None of the (F.) family can really ever live here again -- if they want to be free, not only from fear, but also from allegations."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,550685,00.html
|
|
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1083
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:50 pm |
|
|
|
Austria incest case revives prison term debate
Lenient European sentences reviewed in light of rape, imprisonment case
Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria - Police say Josef Fritzl left a lot of human wreckage in his wake: the daughter he imprisoned and raped for 24 years, the seven children he fathered with her and the wife whose life he shattered.
Yet, for an atrocity that has stunned the world, he may wind up serving just 15 years in prison if charged, tried and convicted.
Practically speaking, that may translate into a life sentence for Fritzl, 73. But his case has revived a debate over Europe's lenient penal system — and whether harsher, U.S.-style sentencing guidelines might help deter such heinous crimes.
"Fifteen years for destroying human lives is unacceptable," said Harald Vilimsky, a public safety policy official with Austria's conservative Freedom Party. "Any punishment that falls a single day short of a life sentence is a mockery of the victims."
Many Europeans abhor the death penalty, and capital punishment is illegal across the 27-nation EU. But in many countries, even convicted murderers handed life sentences seldom serve more than 25 years.
Sweden has life imprisonment for murder, but the sentencing guidelines go as low as 10 years. That applies — in theory at least — even to serial killers.
In Germany, convicted rapists are punished with sentences of six months to five years. Serial cases, and those involving weapons or death threats, can fetch up to 10 years in prison — but also as little as 12 months.
Poland's maximum for rape is 15 years, and that would apply even for sexual assaults repeatedly carried out over two dozen years as alleged in the Austrian case. The standard time served? Two to 12 years.
"It's rare that anyone serves the full sentence in Europe," said James Whitman, a professor of comparative and foreign law at Yale. "It's expected that people are let out early."
In the U.S., by contrast, first-degree rape is punishable by up to life imprisonment in states ranging from Maryland to South Dakota.
More in American lock-ups
Experts say Europe's shorter sentences — and its reluctance to jail people for offenses considered minor, such as possessing small amounts of marijuana — help explain why its prisons are far less crowded than U.S. lockups.
The U.S. has the most prisoners per capita in the world, with 751 for every 100,000 people, according to the London-based International Center for Prison Studies. Most European nations trail far behind: Britain's rate is 151 per 100,000, Austria's is 108 and Denmark's is 66.
Fritzl surely would face a tougher prison term anywhere in America, and in some states maybe even the death penalty, said Dan Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
"I think it's fair to say that in any jurisdiction in the U.S. his maximum sentence would be much more severe," he said.
In Italy, murder carries a minimum sentence of 21 years and a maximum of life. But life terms are rarely handed down in a system that emphasizes rehabilitation over incarceration, said Carlo Guarnieri, a justice expert at the University of Bologna Law School.
"The Italian system is very European and not American at all," Guarnieri said. "In general terms, penalties are lenient. The general outlook of the court is in favor of rehabilitation, although today there is a lot of discussion that this doesn't work."
Prosecutors try to build case
In Austria, prosecutors are still mulling how to charge Fritzl, who police say confessed to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth — now 42 — in a warren of windowless, soundproofed rooms beneath his home when she was 18 and raping her repeatedly.
They say Fritzl also admitted to incinerating the body of one of the seven children he fathered after the child died in infancy.
Authorities say Fritzl could face up to 15 years if convicted of rape. Prosecutors are looking into whether the retired electrician could be tried for "murder through failure to act" in the infant's death.
Austria's criminal code prescribes prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years to life for murder — but in Austrian terms, a life sentence is interpreted as 20 to 25 years of confinement.
Courts also don't tack on extra time for related offenses, unlike in the U.S., where weapons charges or crossing state lines can add significantly to the time ultimately spent behind bars.
Fritzl has not yet been charged, but the most likely charges he faces are rape, incest and false imprisonment. If convicted of all three, he would serve the sentences concurrently and the maximum would be 15 years based on the rapes.
Potentially, it could be far less if he mounts a successful insanity defense. Either way, a trial could be a long way off: Police say their investigation may drag on for another six months.
Austria's justice minister, Maria Berger, said Wednesday the government will conduct a sweeping review of all sentencing laws and propose legislation doubling prison sentences for "especially dangerous" predators.
But Berger insists a more draconian approach probably wouldn't stop the next Fritzl.
"To this kind of perpetrator," she said, "the severity of the punishment means nothing."
Europeans frequently criticize the U.S. system, where first-degree murder and other heinous crimes are punishable by life without possibility of parole, or, in some states, death.
Many criticized this month's landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld Kentucky's three-drug lethal injection method and prompted other states to take steps to resume executions, a practice considered barbaric in Europe.
In 2005, death penalty opponents succeeded in getting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's name stripped from a soccer stadium in his Austrian hometown because he refused to pardon a convict on California's death row.
But Europeans have also been rattled by some singularly horrific cases that have challenged their approach to crime and punishment:
In Spain, groups representing victims of the 2004 Madrid commuter train terrorist bombings that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 expressed outrage over last year's acquittal of the alleged ringleader, Rabei Osman. Although the three main figures were sentenced to tens of thousands of years in prison, four other top suspects got off with sentences of 10 to 18 years. Prosecutors are appealing Osman's acquittal.
Belgium's notorious serial pedophile, Marc Dutroux, was on parole for raping schoolgirls when he committed a spree of child kidnappings, rapes and murders that eventually led to a life sentence in 2004. In theory, Dutroux eventually could come up for parole, though that's unlikely because a judge has pronounced him a danger to society and Belgium has toughened its parole rules.
Britons still debate the handling of the infamous 1993 murder of 2-year-old James Bulger by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. They were tried as adults and jailed for the slaying, but released eight years later with new identities. Britain's maximum penalty for adults convicted of murder, rape or kidnapping is life imprisonment, but judges have broad discretion to decide whether to grant parole.
Guarnieri, the Italian justice system expert, said his country's approach reflects its Roman Catholic culture.
"There is an attitude to forgive," he said.
"If you read the newspapers or watch TV, every time there is a crime, the journalist tries to interview the victim and ask if they are forgiving. Always."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24392007/
|
|
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1083
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| gwen
Posted:
Thu May 01, 2008 4:21 pm |
|
|
|
Grim Fate Awaits Children Held in Cellar
Genie -- the 'Feral Girl' -- Did Not Recover, Despite the Best Care
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
May 1, 2008
For the first 13 years of her life, "Genie" was confined to her bedroom, strapped to a toilet by day and bound in a sleeping bag under a metal screen in her crib at night.
Her only human contact was with her father, who beat her every time she vocalized, and barked at her like a dog to quiet her. By the time Genie was liberated in 1970, the child was nearly mute, uttering only a handful of phrases, including "stopit" and "nomore."
The girl was known for her "bunny walk," because she held her hands like paws, and her social interaction was limited to sniffing, spitting and clawing.
This American horror story, explored in the 2001 film "Mockingbird Don't Sing," bears a striking resemblance to another horrific case of abuse that played out in Austria this week.
Police learned that three children had been locked with their mother in the basement of their grandparents' home their entire lives, imprisoned by their 72-year-old grandfather. Although they spoke some German to authorities, the prisoners reportedly spoke to one another only in growls.
"It's as though they were kidnapped by aliens and woke up on another planet," Dr. Stuart Goldman, director of psychiatric education at Children's Hospital in Boston, told ABCNEWS.com. "The impact will be dependent on the age of children, and the younger are more likely to recover."
In addition to experiencing health problems, these children will struggle in their attachments to other people, language development and in their capacity for self-regulation, and in many other areas, Goldman said.
"A scientist can't predict because there are few valid comparisons," he said. "Sporadic reports are that feral kids have not adapted well."
Feral Kids
While German doctors attempt to unravel the toll the abuse has taken on these children, Genie's case offers some clues. The so-called "feral girl" had the best psychiatric help and most devoted foster care, but she never overcame her wounds.
"Their forever is compromised," said Alice Honig, professor of child development at Syracuse University. "Genie was given every bit of love and lessons and experts in language development, but she never recovered."
The Austrian children were exposed to television but had no books or outside stimulation. "Learning cannot take place without human love and care and interactions," said Honig.
German psychologist Bernd Prosser agreed in an interview on Austrian television: "The four will never be able to live normal lives. I am afraid it is too late for that," he said.
Josef Fritzl, 72, imprisoned his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children. One died, three were raised upstairs with Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, and three others were confined to a three-room, cramped cellar with their mother.
Rosemarie Fritzl had reportedly been told her daughter had joined a cult and told police she knew nothing about the children downstairs.
Sadistic Lair
Police found the sadistic lair after 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children living in the basement, fell into a coma and Elisabeth persuaded her father to take the girl to the hospital. Hospital officials grew suspicious and called police, who made the discovery at the family home.
When the children emerged into daylight, 18-year-old Stefan made a squeaking noise and covered his face with his hands. Later, he made gurgling noises when he saw a cow.
"When the media write that the children speak, this is just half-true," said Austrian Police Chief Leopold Etz. "Among each other, they communicate with noises that are a mixture of growling and cooing. If they want to say something so others understand them as well, they have to focus and really concentrate, which seems to be extremely exhausting for them."
Not only is their language impaired, but all three children have defective immune systems and looked "terrified and terribly pale," according to police.
Kerstin, who is still hospitalized with kidney failure, has lost most of her teeth due to vitamin deficiency. Doctors are evaluating Stefan for hearing and sight damage. The entire family shows stooped posture due to the low ceilings in their underground enclosure. Felix, 5, crawls, rather than walks. He also sings to himself and startles easily.
Long-Term Outlook Unclear
Alan E. Kazdin, president of the American Psychological Association, who runs the Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic at Yale University, said the case is so complex there are "no clear answers" about the fate of the three children.
Old-fashioned theories suggest a child's development is fixed for life by the age of 5 or 6, but "all of that is wrong," according to Kazdin.
"There is remarkable plasticity in human beings," he said. "Not everything will be turned around, but there is brain growth at all ages and it is reflected in their ability to overcome these traumas."
Good psychiatric and medical evaluation, followed by treatment for the whole family is their best hope for healing.
"Separating them from their original environment adds to the anxiety," he said, recommending the family be kept intact. "The first priority should be their medical care."
With limited human contact, these children have not experienced "talking to people, seeing how other people get things solved in the world," according to Kazdin. "Language is not just talking. … It's the first step to thinking. It's those cognitive processes that help us negotiate the world."
Kazdin said it would be normal for children trapped in the "primitive society" of the basement to know only simple "yes," "no,' "leave me alone" and "shut up.
"You don't need 40 words for snow."
Sense of Safety Important
The American experts agreed that treatment needs to be gradual and predictable, assuring a "sense of safety" for the children. For now, the family is staying in a "treatment container that can be locked from the inside" to shield them from the outside world, according to European news reports.
Still, the lessons in the American case of Genie are disheartening. Her mother, who was blind, escaped from the father's clutches and sought help at a welfare center in California. He later committed suicide, and authorities took the child from her mother.
Genie received the best care in the country, according to psychologist Honig, who studied her case. Renowned psychologist James Kent became Genie's surrogate parent; the child also had a devoted team of medical workers, whose heroic efforts were compared to those of Annie Sullivan, who taught the blind and deaf Helen Keller.
Genie was eventually reunited with her mother, who could not cope with caring for her. The child was bounced around foster homes and later regressed. She now lives in a sheltered facility in an undisclosed location in Southern California.
In a Walter Cronkite report on Genie in 1970, Dr. Jay Shurley, a psychiatrist, said, "Solitary confinement is, diabolically, the most severe punishment, and in my experience, really quite dramatic symptoms develop in as little as 15 minutes to an hour, and certainly inside of two or three days. And try to expand this to 10 years boggles one's mind."
Still, Honig said the Austrian cases should not be treated as hopeless.
"We bother because they are human beings and God's children," she said. "These children deserve every effort to teach them."
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4758945&page=1
|
|
AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14367
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| gwen
Posted:
Thu May 01, 2008 5:46 pm |
|
|
|
Anguished Austrians question how incest case went undetected
May 1, 5:25 PM (ET)
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
AMSTETTEN, Austria (AP) - Carefree children in alpine costumes danced around a maypole, and parents crowded a churchyard to snap photos of sons and daughters making their first communion.
But an unmistakable melancholy settled Thursday over this town where police say Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her in a windowless warren of soundproofed cellar rooms.
As the sheer monstrosity of his alleged atrocities sank in - less than two years after a young woman escaped her tormentor in another high-profile case - anguished Austrians questioned whether their clannish society and cherished privacy have steered them horribly wrong.
"Without question, this entire experience shows the system isn't working," said Wolfgang Bachmayer, who has been scrambling as one of the nation's chief image consultants to do some damage control.
"It's a question of having a functional society," said Bachmayer, who heads the Austrian Institute for Marketing. "The authorities can't train their eyes everywhere and peer into every bedroom. We can only hope our politicians make the right decisions."
Police allege that Fritzl confessed to taking his daughter Elisabeth - now 42 - captive when she was 18, repeatedly raping her, fathering seven children with her and tossing the body of one of their offspring into a furnace after the child died in infancy.
Authorities say DNA tests confirm Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving children, three of whom he and his wife adopted and raised upstairs. The other three, along with Elisabeth, were held in the cellar and never saw daylight until - aged 19, 18 and 5 - they finally gained their freedom last Saturday.
Amstetten, reflecting shock and shame felt across Austria, has struggled to regain some kind of equilibrium since the revelations.
In a poignant reflection of how life goes on, bulletin boards displayed wedding engagements, the local soccer club's scores and photos of firefighters burning a barn in a training exercise. Tacked to a door just around the corner from the Fritzls' gray concrete apartment complex, a gaily painted poster proclaimed: "Hip Hip Hooray! Stella Turns 4 Today!"
But the mood was somber on Amstetten's tidy main square, where clusters of candles laid on the cobblestones during an evening vigil held earlier this week still flickered amid a pool of sticky wax.
Resident Maria Scheuch said she's convinced that Austria's closed society - a time-honored mind-your-own-business, live-and-let-live approach - will simply have to change.
"We like to say we are so child-friendly. But we must ask ourselves how child-friendly we really are," she said.
Privacy is almost sacrosanct in Austria, where it's not unusual for families living on the same street for many years to have little or no contact beyond a curt greeting exchanged on the street.
Witnesses have since come forward to claim they saw or heard unusual activity, such as Fritzl allegedly struggling under cover of darkness to bring large quantities of food and water into his home through a rear entrance.
Why, many Austrians now want to know, didn't they blow the whistle years ago?
"This could happen anywhere, but the country's image is taking a real hit. Everyone's saying: 'Austria, Land of Dungeons,'" said Karin Cwrtila. "After the Kampusch affair, we didn't think it could get worse."
Natascha Kampusch, who was a freckle-faced 10-year-old when she was kidnapped on her way to school in 1998 and held in a dungeon for nearly eight years, said she thinks Austria's past complicity with the Nazis is at least partly to blame.
Abuse exists worldwide, Kampusch told the British Broadcasting Corp., "but I think it's also a ramification of the Second World War."
During the Nazi era, "the suppression of women was propagated ... an authoritarian education was very important," said the 19-year-old, whose dramatic flight to freedom in August 2006 captured the world's attention.
Experts contend Fritzl may simply have been a wily criminal who outsmarted neighbors and police.
"To organize so many births, supply so many alibis and create an atmosphere where no one dared ask questions, he had to be very lucid and intelligent indeed," said Reinhard Haller, a leading Austrian psychologist.
There has been widespread speculation that Fritzl, 73, may have been traumatized by the war. He was only 3 when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. Yet he was an impressionable preteen when Amstetten - strategically situated on a key railway linking Vienna and the western city of Linz - sustained heavy Allied bombing.
Austria is still taking stock of the long-term effects of WWII, and only recently has it begun to break with decades of silence, denial and repression to confront its Nazi past.
In yet another bizarre twist to a fast-developing case, investigators disclosed Thursday that Fritzl repeatedly warned his captives that poisonous gas would be released if they were to attack him in a bid to escape.
The Nazis gassed to death millions of Jews in concentrations camps - including the Mauthausen camp not far from Amstetten.
It was unclear whether Fritzl had actually rigged the cellar to release toxic gas.
Legal experts say postwar Austria distanced itself from the Nazi legacy by enacting laws - some of which still form the backbone of the nation's modern criminal code - that effectively stripped police of much of their past authority to | |
|
