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PerryPeabody
 Posted:
Thu May 15, 2008 4:01 pm |
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A little more about the poster:
'THERE ARE ALSO GOOD AND HONEST PEOPLE'
Fritzl Incest Victims Thank Public
SPIEGEL ONLINE
The messages describe the joy of experiencing sunlight and fresh air and express thanks to the public for their support. Elisabeth Fritzl and her children have written a poster which is being displayed in the town of Amstetten in which they say they hope that they can one day lead a normal life.
The family has spent the past few weeks in a clinic getting to know each other and trying to come to terms with their horrific ordeal. Now they have decided to thank the public for their support.
Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned in a dungeon and raped by her father Josef Fritzl for 24 years. She gave birth to seven children, three of whom were taken upstairs to live with her parents, another died. Her other three children spent their entire lives underground in a windowless cellar until last month.
Now Elisabeth, along with five of her children and her mother, have made their first contact with the world outside the clinic where they are staying in Amstetten, Austria. A hand-written poster thanking people for their support has been hanging in a shop window since Tuesday in the town where the terrible abuse took place.
The illustrated poster features outlines of the family members' hands with messages written inside. The main one reads: "We, the whole family, want to take this opportunity to thank you all for the sympathy you have shown for our fate. Your compassion helps us a lot to cope with this difficult time and shows us that there are also good and honest people. We hope the time will come for us when we can find our way back into normal life again."
Elisabeth's 18-year-old son, Stefan, who was imprisoned in the basement and had never seen natural light until April, describes his enjoyment of experiencing the sun, fresh air and nature for the first time. His brother, five-year-old Felix, says he would like to play with children and run across a meadow.
Elisabeth's mother Rosemarie, who believed her husband's story that the three other children had been left on their doorstep by her daughter after she had joined a sect, also writes a message: "I miss my dear friends and freedom," she says.
The family itself suggested creating the poster and discussed it with the doctors treating them, their lawyer Christoph Herbst told Austrian news agency APA. [emphasis added]
In the poster, the family members also describe how they miss Kerstin, Elisabeth's eldest daughter who is still in a coma in the hospital in Amstetten. It was her illness that brought the terrible incest case to light after her father Josef Fritzl brought her to the hospital. He then appeared with Elisabeth after police appealed for her mother to contact them. It was only then that his web of lies began to unravel and he was arrested.
http://tinyurl.com/6jwors
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| Dani
Posted:
Thu May 15, 2008 5:44 pm |
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Re: I apologize for causing Dani any consternation
| PerryPeabody wrote: |
Yesterday I posted an article in the ARTICLES thread but it had six photos that I thought everyone here would want to see. Since I don't know how to transfer photos, I asked at the bottom of the article if someone would do that. Both Savannah and B-T kindly did so. The writing on the pictures was in German and B-T then, in another post, supplied the captions to the photos. I then asked B-T what the Grandmother's statement was. B-T was gracious enough to translate it. I thanked her and made the mistake of adding that it was very sad. Gwen, too, was apparently touched by the sadness in the Grandmother's statement, because she added a short comment.
Reading the thread, from the time I posted the article until the end of the colloquy, makes it clear that it wasn't a "discussion" of the issues in the article; it was essentially making arrangements for the posting and translations of the pictures that belonged with the article. (There were also"thank you's" thrown in there when appropriate.)
I certainly apologize for confusing anyone or causing Dani any distress. |
perry peabody!!!! good to see you! i miss our legal discussions at RWV!!!! you owe me no apology whatsoever!!!! i was merely attempting to clarify by our poor mods and admin ( i do not envy them, and respect them!) to please clarify the rules.....i was justifiably admonished because i broke said rules (no comments or discussion).....it was not the case today, and had no intention of making a major issue out of this question, nor more importantly, hurting anyone's feelings! so goood to see you perry!
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Joined: 30 Dec 2007
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| Dani
Posted:
Thu May 15, 2008 5:59 pm |
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| SavannahStar wrote: | Dani's just happy stirring things up.  |
that could not be farther from the truth ss....i was merely attempting to have the rules clarified; as a matter of fact, i believe you brought up the issue, thus having myself and myra admonished for commenting in a "no discussion thread".....absolutely unintentional! and admittedly, violated the rules, it was an oversight. now however, you are even posting in a no discussion thread! (please see previous page)  i would hate for you or anyone to suffer any repercussions for doing exactly what i wrongly did.... just would like rules clarified, so no one is punished for breaking them! 
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Joined: 30 Dec 2007
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| kat
Posted:
Thu May 15, 2008 7:18 pm |
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NOTE: I don't really know how to post articles. Sorry 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/04/austria.internationalcrime1
'My father chose me for himself'
She was kidnapped by her father, imprisoned in a cellar for 24 years and had seven babies by him, but Elisabeth Fritzl survived thanks to her devotion to her children. Fears are growing, though, that a transition to normal life could prove impossible, reports Caroline Davies in Amstetten
Caroline Davies The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008 Article history
They won't have told her yet; it is much too soon. Any hopes that Elisabeth Fritzl may have of living a normal life with her children, funded by compensation from the father who imprisoned and repeatedly raped her, will be in vain.
Yesterday it was revealed that Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old grandfather who incarcerated Elisabeth in a dank dungeon for 24 years beneath the family home and fathered her seven children, is financially ruined, with millions of euros in debts.
As Fritzl was moved to solitary confinement for his own safety, his heavily mortgaged property empire was on the brink of collapse, taking with it any dreams of a haven where Elisabeth and her children could find happiness.
It is a cruel blow for a daughter who still can offer no clue as to why her father held her captive in a windowless bunker beneath the grey, three-storey townhouse at Yppsstrasse 40, in the small town of Amstetten. 'I don't know why it was so,' she has told detectives. 'My father simply chose me for himself.'
Today she and her children are a few miles away from their dungeon home in the Clinic Mostviertel, where they have begun a long and painful journey towards rehabilitation that experts estimate could take eight years.
Elisabeth and her children have their own unique traumas to resolve. Half are the 'upstairs family' - Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12 - all fathered by Fritzl in the cramped chambers he dug out beyond his cellar. All three were taken in as babies by him and raised by his wife Rosemarie, 68, after seemingly just appearing, one after another, on the doorstep of the family home. Fritzl would tell everyone that their mother had run away to join a sect, dumping them with her parents because she could not care for them herself.
Then there is the 'downstairs family' - Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five - who remained in the tiny prison, never once seeing daylight and knowing only four other faces in their whole lives. Kerstin is comatose in hospital, suffering from renal failure. It was her life-threatening illness that would eventually betray Fritzl's monstrous secret.
Her two brothers are stooped, anaemic and barely able to communicate in anything other than their own peculiar growling language. A seventh child, Alexander's twin, died three days after birth, his body incinerated by Fritzl in the house's furnace.
Perhaps the worst fears are for Elisabeth. She is said to be 'deeply distressed', agreeing to talk to doctors and detectives only on the promise that she will have no further contact with her father. At the age of only 42, her crudely cut hair is completely white, her lips are shrunken around toothless gums, her face is deeply lined, her body painfully thin, her skin almost transparent. According to a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Guntram Knecht, she has been 'destroyed by all means'. Of all those Fritzl damaged, she was the only one to know she was a victim. If she can live with her children again, 'it will be because of her desire to be a mother,' he said.
Police photographs of the labyrinth of cellar rooms show narrow, stone-lined passageways, uneven floors and ceilings no higher than 5ft 6in. There was an ancient cooker, washing machine, freezer, as well as a television, video and radio. A small area housed a lavatory, sink and tiny shower. All the rooms were lit by harsh strip-lighting.
Poignantly, the pictures show how Elisabeth desperately tried to decorate the drab rooms for the sake of her children. On the grimy white bathroom tiles are a painted yellow snail with green shell, a purple octopus, a child's drawing of a flower and a fish, and stickers of stars and the sun - all of them things her 'cellar children' had never seen, except on the television, which was on all day.
No photographs have been released of the two tiny rooms where all four slept, or the rubber-padded room where Fritzl is believed to have raped his daughter away from the children. Was it in this room that she also delivered her babies without any medical help?
In all, the area measured 60 square metres, with Fritzl enlarging it as his family grew. But the area is so confined that police officers now examining it can work for only an hour at a time because of the severe lack of oxygen.
For Elisabeth there was no way out. Fritzl threatened that poisonous gas would be pumped in if they tried to overpower him. Police are checking this, along with his claim that an electronic lock on the door was designed to open automatically after a lengthy period. But they are sceptical. Fritzl enjoyed several holidays, including a three-week break in Pattaya, Thailand's sex-tourist resort, in 1998. Had he met with an accident, would his downstairs family simply have starved to death? Or was someone else helping to feed them?
Throughout the years, Fritzl lived his grotesque double life with relish. According to his wife's sister, Christina, he went to the cellar every day, usually at about 9am, allegedly to draw blueprints for machines he was selling. He would often spend whole nights there. He watched motor racing on television with his children and, in a bizarre attempt at playing the normal father, would buy toys for the children and play with them.
He bought Elisabeth clothes. Sometimes she chose them out of a catalogue. On other occasions he would choose them himself. Friends he holidayed with in Thailand saw him picking out a glittering evening dress and lingerie at a market - clearly much too small for his rotund, ageing wife. When he realised that he had been spotted, he joked about 'having a bit on the side'. Not for one minute did they suspect it could be his daughter.
But it is clear that he wanted Elisabeth, whom he called his Liesl, to dress up and parade around for him in the squalid, miserable cell he forced her to call home. Then, after raping her, he would settle down at the table while she prepared a meal and they would discuss the children's upbringing.
Some upbringing, but Elisabeth was determined to do the best she could. Though there were no books, she watched adventure films with them on television and made up stories about princesses and pirates. 'Their mother taught them some reading and writing, though Elisabeth herself lost much of her childhood knowledge because of the years of sexual abuse,' said Chief Inspector Leopold Etz.
Upstairs, the three other children continued to thrive, doing well at school, playing the trumpet, and were regularly seen out on Saturday nights, laughing and joking with their grandfather and Mami, as they called Rosemarie.
It was Elisabeth's primeval instinct as a mother desperate to save her child that finally led to her father's arrest. Realising that Kerstin was seriously ill, she demanded he take the girl to Amstetten general hospital. She slipped a secret, desperate note into her daughter's pocket, telling doctors that she had given her cough medicine and aspirin. 'Please, please help her. Kerstin is really terrified of other people. She was never in a hospital,' she wrote, adding a one-line message for her daughter: 'Kerstin, please stay strong until we see each other again.'
Upon reading it, doctors immediately made a TV appeal for her to come forward. When Elisabeth saw it, she ordered Fritzl to take her. And he did, accompanying her on the journey that would lead to his arrest in the hospital grounds and the end of her nightmare, which began a quarter of a century earlier on 28 August, 1984.
Elisabeth was 18 and working as a waitress at a motorway service station near Amstetten when she was lured to the cellar by her father that day. He knocked her out with ether and handcuffed her to a metal pole. For the first few weeks he kept her in the dark, visiting only to rape her and supply food. 'She had the choice, to be raped or to starve,' said a police source.
She was reported missing, but police, neighbours and supposedly even her own mother believed Fritzl's explanation that she had run away to join a sect. A letter, which she was forced to write, arrived at the house a month later, reinforcing the lie. It told her parents that she was making a new life for herself and that they should not search for her.
Fritzl singled Elisabeth out early. The fourth of his seven children by his wife, she was still an infant when, in 1967, he was sentenced to 18 months for climbing through an open bedroom window and raping a sleeping woman in the Austrian city of Linz, where he was working as an electrical engineer. Investigations have shown that he also had convictions for an attempted rape and for indecent exposure.
However, these were expunged from his records 15 years later, in line with Austrian law. Social workers found no trace of the convictions while rubber-stamping the paperwork that would allow him to adopt one of Elisabeth's children and foster two others. By then he was a seemingly successful landlord, renting out flats at the family home and at four other premises he owned, as well as running a lakeside pub and campsite. Family friends remember Elisabeth as a 'very withdrawn and shy' child. Paul Hoerer, 69, who first met Fritzl on holiday in 1973 and visited the Amstetten house several times, noticed that she 'got a slap for every small thing'.
Though domineering and despotic with all his children, Fritzl appeared to treat Elisabeth even more brutally than her siblings and Hoerer got the impression that 'he did not like her very much'. When she reached the age of 11, the abuse started. From then on Elisabeth would be raped by her father regularly: in his car, during forest walks, even in the same cellar that would become her prison.
At 16, she twice attempted to run away from home, but each time was delivered back into her father's violent embrace by the local authorities. Three years later, there was no possibility of escape.
The chambers were so well hidden that police initially failed to find them until Fritzl guided them through five different rooms in the cellar, to his workshop. There, concealed behind shelves laden with paint cans and containers, was a 3ft-high, reinforced, 660lb concrete door, secured electronically. Though adamant that he had no accomplice, police are struggling to explain how he could have fitted it alone.
But why did he choose to release the three 'upstairs' children and not the others? A likely explanation is that when Kerstin and Stefan were born Fritzl believed it was possible they could be secluded for ever. But as the raping continued, and Elisabeth's family grew, he simply ran out of room. It was too late to move the two eldest, who by now had memories of the place and of their mother and him together. So they were condemned. By the time Felix arrived, he may have believed that his wife was too old to cope.
There are signs that Fritzl was planning to release them. He had made Elisabeth write a letter in which she said she wanted to come back, 'but it's not possible yet'.
'Perhaps he was aware that he couldn't keep the thing going forever,' said Colonel Franz Polzer, police chief of Lower Austria. Or perhaps he was no longer attracted to his anaemic, ailing daughter who now looked as old as her mother.
His plan seems to have been that Elisabeth would appear to return suddenly from the sect and that the dreadful physical condition of her and her children could be attributed to her treatment there. But this deceit was denied by Kerstin's illness.
Today the family is slowly acclimatising in a special area set aside for them at the clinic. Elisabeth and her mother are said to have have wept for hours together, with Rosemarie saying over and over: 'I'm so sorry. I had no idea.'
After their initial delights at seeing the sun for the first time, and riding in cars, Stefan and Felix can clamber back into the dark confines of a special container set up in the clinic to help them adjust to life outside.
Felix often crawls in there, and sits humming an unknown melody to himself. Police believe his mother used it to soothe him to sleep.
'It can't be called a good-night song really, as there was never any night in the cellar,' said Chief Inspector Etz.
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:03 am |
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Josef Fritzl’s threats to gas family were a bluff
By Andreas Sam in Vienna
Last Updated: 2:29AM BST 16/05/2008
Josef Fritzl’s threats that his captive family would be gassed to death if they tried to escape their underground dungeon were a mere bluff, Austrian police have revealed.
Austrian police believe Fritzl started planning his dungeon in 1978
Fritzl, 73, who kept his daughter Elisabeth, 42, as a personal sex slave in a concrete bunker beneath his house for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, told his captive family that they would trigger a special mechanism and be poisoned by gas if they tried to escape.
He kept them in a constant fear of death also by telling them that they would be killed by an electric shock if they tried to open the steel door that imprisoned them in the 55-square-metre dungeon under his house in the town of Amstetten.
But after over two weeks of investigating the dungeon, police revealed that his threats were a bluff aimed to pre-empt any attempts of escape, as there were no gas pipes leading into family’s subterranean dwelling.
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:35 am |
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The door in the cellar leading to the underground rooms where Elizabeth and her three children were held.
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:39 am |
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Elizabeth Fritzl, left as a teenager, and Monika 14, one of her daughter's allowed to leave the dungeon.
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:44 am |
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:53 am |
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Page last updated at 12:41 GMT, Wednesday, 30 April 2008 13:41 UK
Physical toll of Austrian captivity
By Martin Hutchinson
The children never saw sunlight
The three children who emerged from an Austrian cellar last week are showing clear physical signs of their years spent underground.
While the resilience of children cannot be underestimated, the effects of a sunless prison on their developing bodies could be long lasting.
The actions of Josef Fritzl meant that neither his daughter, Elisabeth, nor her imprisoned children, had any access to modern healthcare, or even sunlight.
Pregnancy and childbirth would have been the time of greatest risk.
A healthy immune system isn't just created by nature, but also by the environment that a child lives in - there could be a lack of exposure to the normal repertoire of challenges that other children would face
Professor Bobby Gaspar
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Maternal death rates in Europe are approximately a hundredfold less compared with parts of the world where there is poor or non-existent antenatal and postnatal care - analogous to the situation faced by Elisabeth.
The risk to her newborn children was also substantially increased by the lack of proper facilities.
It is not known whether the life of her seventh child, a twin baby who died shortly after birth, could have been saved if medical care had been at hand.
However, Patrick O'Brien, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said it was reasonable to suggest a massive increase in risk for Elisabeth during this time.
"Most babies will be delivered absolutely fine, even without medical assistance, but there is a huge rise in the chance of serious complications for both mother and baby when there is a lack of care during pregnancy, and particularly around the time of birth.
"This is particularly so during twin deliveries."
None had seen a doctor or a dentist since birth, and it is reported that, at the age of 19, the oldest daughter kept in captivity has already lost most of her teeth.
No sunshine
The cellar had no windows, and a lack of sunlight can be harmful - it helps the body produce vitamin D, which has a role in bone formation.
The children have been treated in hospital
While a healthy diet can compensate for this, there are signs this was not the case for these children, with medical tests revealing vitamin D deficiency.
The consequences are unclear, but there is some evidence to suggest that vitamin D may help to prevent diseases such as cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and heart disease.
Vitamin D deficiency can cause pain, spasms and weakness in the muscles. It can also cause joint pain, soft and deformed bones and retarded growth.
Another problem for the older children is directly related to the low ceilings in their prison - a permanently hunched posture.
Other long term effects are less clear, although the authorities suggest that the children have "defective" immune systems.
The development of a healthy immune system does depend to some extent on the body being constantly challenged by new infections and allergens, and a childhood spent in virtual isolation would prevent this from happening.
There is a huge rise in the chance of serious complications for both mother and baby when there is a lack of care during pregnancy, and particularly around the time of birth
Patrick O'Brien
Consultant obstetrician, University College Hospital, London
Professor Bobby Gaspar, a specialist in paediatric immunology at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said the information released by the Austrian authorities did not reveal much about the precise nature of the immune problem, and that the true extent of this would become clear over the coming months.
He said: "A healthy immune system isn't just created by nature, but also by the environment that a child lives in - there could be a lack of exposure to the normal repertoire of challenges that other children would face."
He suggested the children's immune system might also be compromised in some way by lack of vitamin D, which plays a key role in enabling immune cells to clear the body of potentially harmful debris and infection.
If their immune systems are permanently damaged by their captivity, then they could face a lifetime of increased vulnerability to a range of infections and illnesses.
Genetic problems
Otherwise, say the Austrian authorities, the children are healthy, and it appears that most of the six fathered by Fritzl have escaped the threat of genetic defects caused by inbreeding.
Quite apart from the social stigma associated with incestuous relationships, there is good biological reason why they are a very bad idea.
If a family harbours a genetic defect, there is a raised risk that a child of an incestuous relationship could inherit two, rather than one copy of the defective gene, making a health problem inevitable.
One of the three children raised in the rooms above is reported to have a heart defect, but it is unknown whether this could be the result of a genetic problem.
There is little or no data about the threat of this from relationships between father and daughter, although in rough terms, the risk of defects is doubled in first cousin marriages.
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Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:57 am |
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'Second man' at Austrian cellar
Mr Fritzl confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years
A lodger at the Austrian house where a father allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter says he saw another man go to the cellar where the abuse happened.
Alfred Dubanovsky told the BBC the man was introduced as a plumber.
His claim contradicts those of investigators who say the father, Josef Fritzl, had no accomplice.
Police say Mr Fritzl's daughter, Elisabeth, was imprisoned and sexually abused by her father in the cellar for 24 years, in the town of Amstetten.
Seven children were born from the abuse, three of whom remained incarcerated with her, never seeing daylight until they were released earlier this week.
'Despot'
Mr Dubanovsky, rented a room in the Fritzl house for 12 years.
He and other lodgers were forbidden to go down to the cellar under threat of eviction, he told the BBC.
Fritzl's lodger tells his story
In his ground floor room he heard noises coming from the cellar, but Mr Fritzl passed it off as the gas heating system.
Mr Dubanovsky assumed the basement was being used as a storeroom because a neighbour said Mr Fritzl often took food down to the cellar.
However, officials believe that no-one was aware of the existence of the purpose-built dungeon, citing DNA tests.
"I think we can rule out accomplices," Leopold Etz, chief of homicide investigations for Lower Austria province, told the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, a sister-in-law, Christine R, told the Oesterreich newspaper that Mr Fritzl used to go into the cellar every morning at 0900 "apparently to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms" .
"Often he even stayed down there for the night," she added. "Rosi [his wife] wasn't allowed to bring him a coffee".
The newspaper did not give Christine's family name.
She said Mr Fritzl "was a despot, I hated him". She said he "always belittled" his wife Rosemarie, who has told police she knew nothing about the captives in the windowless cellar.
Door inspection
Elisabeth and the children are now in care with the Austrian authorities, who are protecting their privacy at a psychiatric clinic. The oldest daughter, Kerstin, is fighting for her life in hospital.
Mr Fritzl, in police custody, is refusing to answer any more questions, as police try to piece together his life.
Investigators are examining the cellar door, to see how Mr Fritzl operated it. He told police that he used a coded keypad to open it remotely.
Police are checking his claim that the heavy reinforced concrete door would open automatically if he were absent for a long time.
He also reportedly told his victims they would be gassed if anything happened to him. Technicians are trying to establish if this was more than a threat.
Former Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch told the BBC that Elisabeth Fritzl and her family would need "a lot of silence" to recover, adding: "Time heals all wounds."
Ms Kampusch was kidnapped aged 10 and held in a basement cell for eight years, until she escaped in August 2006.
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 1:06 am |
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Hope for the children of the cellar
By Kathryn Westcott
BBC News
There was one room to sleep in and one to cook in
The Austrian children locked in a cellar with their mother since birth have been through an experience that is hard to imagine.
But experts say the psychological damage they have suffered could be less severe than you may think.
The two boys - aged 18 and five - and their 42-year-old mother Elisabeth Fritzl are said to be receiving medical and psychological treatment. The 19-year-old girl, Kerstin, is in a coma in hospital for reasons that are unclear.
Ernst Berger, the psychologist who worked with Natascha Kampusch - who was abducted at the age of 10 and held in a cellar in Austria for eight years until 2006 - said Elisabeth and her children could be suffering from a variety of traumas.
He said they would need extensive psychological counselling if they were ever to have a chance of regaining normal lives.
A 'real car'
"The consequences of the psychological trauma can be very varied, from severe depression to feelings of suicide, or social phobia, such as wanting to shut themselves of from people, but they differ from individual to individual," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.
"They have panic attacks, fears and nightmares. It depends on their way of life as to how it manifests itself."
The rooms in the cellar were described as very narrow
Details about the case are still emerging, but, local official Hans-Heinz Lenze said he had spoken to the five-year-old boy.
"I attended a clinic in Mauer, and I talked with social workers there, I visited members of the family and during this visit I could see that the five-year old boy is in a better condition," he said.
"He even told me how happy he was and how fantastic it was to ride in a real car."
According to police, the mother taught the children to speak. It is also believed they had a television, although it is not known for how long.
Professor Jay Belsky, an expert in the field of child development and family studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the fact that the children were with their mother - a source of security - and with each other, could have mitigated the amount of trauma they suffered.
"Potentially, the children could have led tolerably rich social lives - there were four people there, at least three of them for a long period of time. This isn't a story about a child being locked in a closet all by himself," he told the BBC News website.
He said that in terms of the five-year-old, he would have been unlikely to have known what he was missing.
"As a youngster, your immediate environment is your whole world," he says.
Three of the children lived upstairs with the grandparents
"If there were books, games and a TV, there were things for all the children to make a psychological life around. It need not be as atrocious as it might first appear," he says.
However, Professor Belsky stressed that much of this would be dependent on the mother's mental state.
"It's hard to imagine that her own mental well-being was not compromised, and this would have undermined her ability to support and nurture her children," he says.
Police have said Elisabeth appeared "greatly disturbed" during questioning.
Social problems
Professor Belsky suggested that the TV could have taught the children some notion of appropriate social behaviour and about the wider world.
However, he said, there would have been problems with the older children when they realised that this was not just an imaginary world, but a real one that they were being deprived of.
"This would have only added insult to injury," he says.
Professor Belsky said there was no doubt the children would bear some psychological scars.
"It's hard to imagine that the teenagers would ever lead truly normal lives like you and I would think of, but even development at that late age is possible - social skills are learnable," he says.
It is possible that if you eat a good diet, you won't necessarily need much sunlight
Dr Colin Michie
He says the repetitiveness of their existence would not have offered them much of a cognitive challenge, or much opportunity to encounter novelty.
"They might end up being stunted in their natural curiosity about how the world works," he said.
But he sounded a note of optimism: "We've seen enough surprises in human development of children doing better than expected under seemingly atrocious conditions," he says.
Peter Fonagy, director of the research department of clinical, educational and health psychology at University College London, said the children were likely to suffer significant social problems in the medium term because of their lack of social interaction.
"They are likely to suffer significant cognitive and perceptual deficit and major problems with emotional regulation," he says. "The parts of the brain that read emotion in other people would not be so well developed."
But he said that cognitively, the five year old had a very good chance of catching up, and that, despite their ages, there was much the others could still learn.
"The human brain is marvellous in its ability to adapt to different circumstances," he said.
According to reports, the children are undergoing tests in hospital, in particular for problems with their eyes and skin due to the lack of daylight.
The children were reported to be very pale but in a good physical state.
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Posts: 1488
Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 1:23 am |
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Short Video of Josef on vacation in Thailand can be viewed here
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/04/30/vo.thailand.fritzl.holiday.bildde
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1488
Location: State of Confusion
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Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 1:35 am |
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Hi babybee - haven't seen you around in awhile. 
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"Our Pat"
Joined: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 36025
Location: "Onboard" pathenry's desk
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 1:58 am |
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RSS News for you | What's this?
HomeNewsUK & World News
Dungeon monster dad Josef Fritzl's luxury life in jail revealed
May 12 2008 By Janice Burns
DUNGEON monster Josef Fritzl is enjoying a more comfortable life in prison than his victims enjoyed.
The rapist has a TV, radio, bedside lamp and even pot plants in his cell.
And natural light streams in through glass.
It's the opposite of the hell he kept his daughter Elisabeth and three of their children in.
The beast fathered seven kids with Elisabeth in a windowless pit where he kept her caged for 24 years.
And the only outlook she had on the world was a TV set with selected channels.
Elisabeth, now 42, Kerstin. 19, Stefan, 18, and five-year-old Felix spent their lives in cramped conditions, never seeing daylight.
The monster has 10ft by 12ft cell while his victims lived in a cramped 5ft 5in cellar.
Fritzl, 73, is sharing with a 36-year-old career criminal serving time for gun offences.
He is entitled to an hour a day of fresh air and exercise but has refused out of fear fellow inmates at St Poelten prison in Austria will attack him.
Fritzl's victims suffered such a lack of oxygen they had to spend long spells lying down.
There was no door or curtain between Elisabeth's bedroom and the remaining living area - so the children witnessed Fritzl raping her.
Police inspecting his subterranean maze had to come up for air after less than an hour.
The dank atmosphere was so poor his victims were left with fungal skin conditions. Yet just 60 miles from the dungeon he constructed under the family home in Amstetten, Fritzl has a smart, self-contained area with a hygienic toilet and hand basin.
He has accepted the offer of private showers, a precaution due to the dangers of contact with angry lags.
There are magazines and soft bedding for a good night's sleep. Nutritionists have selected three healthy balanced dishes a day for him.
Elisabeth and her children survived on frozen food he smuggled down to them.
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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Location: State of Confusion
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 2:07 am |
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RSS News for you | What's this?
HomeNewsnewsfeed1
Austrian dungeon dad Josef Fritzl reveals he wanted to get daughter pregnant
May 9 2008 Patrick Mulchrone In Austria
DUNGEON monster Josef Fritzl didn't use contraception when he raped his sex-slave daughter - because he WANTED to get her pregnant.[/b
]In a twisted prison cell confession, the beast admitted: "I was happy with the offspring.
"It was a lovely idea for me to have a proper family down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children."
Fritzl, 73, fathered seven kids with daughter Elisabeth, now 42, in the windowless hell-hole where he kept her caged for 24 years.
He blamed his crimes on an "addiction" which "got out of control", and added: "I knew that Elisabeth didn't like what I was doing to her. I knew I was hurting her.
"I knew the whole time that what I was doing was not right, that I must be mad for doing such a thing.
"But it became completely matter-of-fact for me that I had a second life in the cellar of my house."
After describing how he imprisoned and brutalised his daughter beneath the family home in Amstetten, Austria, Fritzl described himself as "a man of decency and good values".
He insisted he "tried as best he could" to care for his secret family, and added: "When I went into the bunker, I brought my daughter flowers and my children books and stuffed animals."
Fritzl said he enjoyed watching adventure videos with the kids while Elisabeth cooked dinner, "and then we'd all sit down and eat together".
The beast wrote his confession in his cell and asked his lawyer to hand it to an Austrian magazine.
[b]Fritzl claimed that the roots of his crime lay in his childhood under the Nazis - and his twisted sexual desires for his own mother.
He said he chose Elisabeth as a victim because she looked so like his mum Maria - and because her rebellious teenage behaviour offended his love of "discipline".
"I am from the old school," he wrote. "During the time of the Nazis that meant discipline and self-control."
Fritzl said he became "a husband in some way" to his mother after she split from her own husband, a man he described as "a worthless scoundrel and womaniser".
He said he "succeeded in suppressing" his lust for Maria. But he could not control himself when it came to Elisabeth - one of seven kids he had with wife Rosemarie.
"My desire to have sex with Elisabeth became ever stronger," he said. "It was a vicious circle from which there was no exit - not only for Elisabeth, but also for myself."
Fritzl added: "Elisabeth was very different to my other children.
"She'd go out the whole night long, drank alcohol, even ran away twice.
"I tried to get her out of this rut - that just made her fight me all the more. That's when I decided to find somewhere for her, even if I had to force her from the outside world."
Fritzl denied that he began molesting Elisabeth when she was 11. But he admitted that he spent years preparing the cellar before drugging and imprisoning her in 1984.
"It would have been 1981 or 1982 when I began," he said.
Fritzl put Elisabeth in the cellar when she was 18. He told Rosemarie and his other children that she had run away to join a religious cult.
When Elisabeth became pregnant for the first time, Fritzl "gave her medical books so she knew what she had to do on the day". He also gave her towels, disinfectant and bandages.
But he admitted his daughter was terrified of giving birth without medical help. One of her children, a son, Michael, died in infancy, and Fritzl disposed of his body by throwing it into a heating furnace.
Fritzl took three of the surviving kids upstairs to live with him, telling his unsuspecting wife that Elisabeth had abandoned them.
He left the other children in the cellar with their mother. "It wasn't that difficult to prevent their escape," he wrote.
"I didn't use any physical violence. They just accepted this was their family, I was the leader and that was how it was going to be."
Fritzl said he often wanted to free his victims. But he admitted: "I feared being arrested. I feared my family and people in the outside world finding out about my crime."
The dungeon was only discovered when Elisabeth's oldest child, Kerstin, 19, fell seriously ill and Fritzl allowed her to be taken to hospital.
Kerstin is still fighting for life. Elisabeth and the other children are being cared for in a psychiatric unit.
Fritzl is awaiting trial for rape and could also be charged with murdering baby Michael through neglect.
Asked if he had considered suicide, he said: "I do not want to die. I have only one wish - to repent."
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1488
Location: State of Confusion
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| Schmerty
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 2:13 am |
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I hope he dies soon & his victims can try a new life with fresh air & try to forget him, their torturer & murderer!
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Skipping along my own path.
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 4287
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| babybee
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 2:22 am |
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I hope he lives a long old life and suffers every day. Why should he die soon and not have to suffer and be abused by other prisoners. He deserves every horrific thing that could happen to him after the way he treated his daughter and her children. Actually I think he should have to live the rest of his life locked up in his dungeon in his cellar and let 'bubba' come abuse him once or twice a week. It's going to be hard enough on him taking orders from the guards and I hope they are rough on him.
Hi PH.......  Nice to see you!!!
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1488
Location: State of Confusion
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| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 7:25 am |
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Incest dad Josef Fritzl's dungeon children out for walk at last
mirror.co.uk
By Ryan Parry 17/05/2008
The children kept in a dungeon by incest dad Josef Fritzl have ventured outside for the first time.
Doctors in Austria have let his daughter Elisabeth and her sons Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, spend time in a park near their clinic.
They had been indoors since being freed last month from the windowless cellar where the boys had spent their whole lives.
But now they have been allowed to walk around in daylight as part of their tentative steps towards recovery - and they have been amazed by the world around them.
Stefan and Felix marvelled at the sunshine, woodland and pond fish.
Dr Berthold Kepplinger, head of the Amstetten-Mauer clinic, is thought to have given his consent after closely monitoring them.
A source said: "The light sensitivity has almost disappeared. None of them are wearing goggles now - they are ready for daylight."
. . . .
http://tinyurl.com/3russk
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1600
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| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 7:32 am |
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Same story, expanded:
Cellar kids first steps into world
By NEIL SYSON
and BRIAN FLYNN
in Amstetten, Austria
sun.co.uk
Published: Today
FREED cellar boys Stefan and Felix Fritzl have taken their first ever steps in the "magical" outside world.
The brothers, raised by mum Elisabeth in a dungeon under the home of her cruel dad Josef, finally ventured out of the psychiatric clinic where they are recovering from their ordeal.
And they marvelled at their surroundings as they wandered among trees, picked flowers and gazed at the abundance of wildlife.
They were especially fascinated by hundreds of goldfish swimming in a pond in the grounds of Austria’s Mauer Landesklinkum clinic.
Before the dusk adventure, the lads had been allowed only to watch from their hospital apartment — staring open-mouthed at the sight of night turning to day.
Stefan, 18, his five-year-old brother and Elisabeth, 42, have now discarded the protective goggles doctors insisted they wear as their eyes adjusted to sunlight.
The boys have been given immunisation jabs normally received by newborn babies — but which their mum was unable to provide during years of incarceration at their subterranean home in Amstetten.
Sources said the pair, who first saw daylight as they were plucked from the cellar last month, enjoyed a "magical" first walk outside.
One told The Sun: "It was wonderful. The light sensitivity they were suffering two weeks ago has almost disappeared. Doctors were concerned that the boys lacked immunisation to everyday illnesses.
"But after the jabs, they’re happy that they now have enough resistance to mix with others."
Elisabeth was held captive underground for 24 years by evil Josef, 73, and had seven children by him — one dying as a baby.
She is learning to bond again at the clinic with mum Rosemarie — Josef’s 69-year-old wife — and other kids Lisa, 16, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, who were all allowed a "normal" existence above ground.
The source added: "Elisabeth and Rosemarie enjoy cooking for the children and giving them new tastes. Stomaching new foods is no problem for Stefan and Felix — they are fascinated by every dish. The youngsters are allowed DVDs and computer games at night.
"The siblings have gelled incredibly well. It’s astounding to think how quickly they have all slotted into their new family roles."
And the source DENIED reports that Elisabeth — saved after 19-year-old daughter Kerstin was rushed to hospital desperately ill — is now white-haired with stumps for teeth.
He said: "She is attractive. Her hair’s a normal colour, she still has her teeth and her figure is slim."
But the freed family have been forced to start rigorous exercise routines to restore bodies crippled by lack of sunlight and movement in their 180 square feet prison.
Stefan was practically bent double when police rescued him.
Orthopaedic specialist Dr Stefan Preis said: "Their cardiovascular systems, muscles and joints have been severely diminished."
The family are expected to remain at the clinic for several months. A decision has yet to be taken whether they will return to the local community or move.
Meanwhile police have revealed that Josef’s threats that the group would be automatically gassed or electrocuted if they tried to escape were merely a "cruel bluff".
Experts found there was not even a gas pipe into the dungeon.
http://tinyurl.com/42ox82
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1600
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| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 9:28 am |
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Josef Fritzl family: hospital ban after worker tried to sell pictures
telegraph.co.uk
Bojan Pancevski
1:07PM BST 17/05/2008
Medical staff involved in the care of the family of Josef Fritzl have been banned from carrying mobile phones and cameras after a hospital employee was accused of trying to sell a picture of the incest victims for 300,000 euros.
The management of the Amstetten-Mauer psychiatric hospital, where the family are being treated, has sent a circular letter to all employees threatening sacking and legal action against anyone who leaks information or photographs of the Fritzls.
Dr Berthold Kipplinger, the head of the hospital, said: "In order for the therapy to be successful the private sphere of the patients must be protected. We are doing everything to protect the family from external disturbances and possible secondary traumas. We assume that the family will have to stay at the hospital for several more months."
Josef Fritzl, 73, a wealthy engineer and property developer, imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth, 42, in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his house in the town of Amstetten, and kept her locked up for 24 years as a sex slave, fathering seven children with her.
One of the children, a baby boy called Michael, died shortly after birth and Fritzl disposed of his body in an incinerator.Fritzl selected three of his surviving children, Lisa, 15, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12, to live in the upstairs apartment with his wife Rosemarie, 68, while the other three, Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, were forced to dwell with their mother Elisabeth in the concrete bunker below.
The case was revealed last month, when Kerstin fell severely ill and had to be taken to a hospital.
The other children, as well as their mother Elisabeth and grandmother Rosemarie, are now being cared for in a sealed-off area of about 80 square metres in the Amstetten-Mauer hospital.
About 15 hospital employees who have daily access to the family have now been banned from carrying mobile phones and cameras into the room.
Dr Kipplinger said that the condition of the family was improving faster than doctors originally expected, and both sets of children were communicating well and had been playing computer games together.
"The family has grown together and they have already got used to a certain daily rhythm. The children are playing with each other, they paint and they are especially interested in playing computer games - and appear to be very good at that."
. . . .
http://tinyurl.com/53xts7
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1600
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| PerryPeabody
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 12:10 pm |
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From South Africa (and I haven't seen it anywhere else yet--but some new "facts")
Paparazzi harass Fritzl family
17/05/2008 15:52 - (SA)
Vienna - A photographer was caught trying to scale a wall up to the psychiatric ward in Austria where a woman has been recovering from an ordeal as a sex slave, press reports said on Saturday.
The daily newspaper Oesterreich quoted the victim's lawyer as saying the man had late on Thursday tried to reach the balcony of the ward where Elisabeth Fritzl and five of her children are in care.
The family is currently being shielded from the media glare and is receiving psychiatric counselling in a clinic in the town of Amstetten.
But Attorney Christoph Herbst was quoted as saying paparazzi had been increasingly harassing the family to get pictures.
According to police Fritzl, 42, was kept as a sex slave for 24 years by her father, now in custody. She and her six children - allegedly by the father - were freed last month from a cramped, windowless dungeon in the basement of the father's house.
It was the hospitalisation of the eldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin, last month that brought the case to light.
The Saturday newspaper reported also charged that a staff member at the hospital where the victims are being tended had secretly taken an unauthorised picture of one of them and tried unsuccessfully to sell it to the press for €300 000.
The newspaper also quoted hospital staff as saying the family had started to make discreet sorties outside their ward to get fresh air, sometimes disguised so that they would not be recognised.
The mother, for example, had gone for walks in the park disguised as a nurse.
The youngest, aged five, who was never let out of the dungeon since his birth, had gone into town and fulfilled his dream of eating at a fast-food restaurant.
The clinic management could not be reached Saturday for confirmation of the press report details.
The director Berthold Kepplinger has repeatedly said there must be strict respect for their privacy for the victims to be able to reconstruct their lives.
http://tinyurl.com/4ge4ld
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 1600
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| Dani
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 2:43 pm |
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uh oh.....
schmerty and baby bee....no discussions are permitted here... i learned the hard way.....would like to prevent you from repercussions of adamant posters regarding that point! one must abide by rules and all will be well! dani
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Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 810
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| yankee-in-france
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 2:55 pm |
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Re: uh oh.....
| Dani wrote: | | schmerty and baby bee....no discussions are permitted here... i learned the hard way.....would like to prevent you from repercussions of adamant posters regarding that point! one must abide by rules and all will be well! dani |
Dani, life is complicated enough. Let's not sweat the small stuff. 
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YIF
Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 10444
Location: France
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| Dani
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 3:20 pm |
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Re: uh oh.....
| yankee-in-france wrote: |
Dani, life is complicated enough. Let's not sweat the small stuff. |
absolutely!!! as always you are right YIF!
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Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 810
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| Fashionista
Posted:
Sat May 17, 2008 3:49 pm |
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There you have it... the "clarification" you have been "requesting" for days from one of the Staff members that did the reprimanding last weekend
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Homeland Security - Refugee Staff
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 6757
Location: REFSTAGON
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