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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 10:42 am

Josef Fritzl to rent out flats in incest dungeon cellar house
telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 10:31AM BST 15 Sep 2008

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of incest and fathering seven children with his daughter, hopes to rent out flats in the house where he kept her as a sex slave.

Josef Fritzl, 73, a retired engineer, has hired a second lawyer to deal with his property and rent out the flats in his three-storey home in the town of Amstetten dubbed a "House of Horrors".

Fritzl lived in a top floor apartment with his wife Rosemarie, 69, and three of the children he fathered with his daughter Elisabeth, 42, over 24 years, while the other three were forced to live with their mother in a dank concrete dungeon in the cellar, never seeing the light of day until the case was revealed this April.

One of the children died after birth and Fritzl burned the body in a furnace.

The other flats in the house were rented out until Fritzl's arrest, when horrified tenants terminated their contracts and moved out.

"We could not endure living so close to the torture cellar and being reminded every day of it. That is why we wanted nothing but to get out of there and start a new life with our children somewhere else," a former tenant was quoted as saying.

There apparently is no legal obstacle for Fritzl to rent out the upstairs flats. But the cellar is sealed by police as a crime scene and will remain so until the end of the trial, the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported.

According to the Kronen Zeitung, Fritzl has hired Dr Karl Bernhauser, a prominent Vienna lawyer, to handle the property issues for him. Rudolf Mayer, another prominent Viennese lawyer, will represent Fritzl in court, where he is facing charges of manslaughter for the baby that died, as well as rape, deprivation of freedom, coercion and incest.

It was also reported that Fritzl's legal representatives will take legal action against newspapers that infringed on his personal rights in their reports on the case.

Fritzl is currently in the St Poelten remand prison, where he reported to be preparing to the trial which is due to start by the end of the year.
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victims cry PostPosted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:09 am

he is a complete sick fuck
On Vacation!
On Vacation!



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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 9:48 am

Fritzl shows daughter's jail to investigators
Date: 27 September 2008
scotsman.com
By ALLAN HALL

JOSEF Fritzl has visited the cellar where he imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, police said yesterday.

Fritzl was taken from his prison cell in St Pölten on Thursday to his Amstetten house to give investigators a guided tour of the underground prison he constructed.

He was accompanied by three police officers and a judge who was taking testimony from him in court earlier in the week.

Judge Nikolaus Obrovski wanted details of Fritzl's alleged "escape plan" for his daughter and children if anything had happened to him during her years of solitary confinement.

Fritzl failed in his bid to convince authorities that he had installed a time-release clock that would let them out.
http://news.scotsman.com/12007/Fritzl-shows-daughters-jail-to.4534494.jp




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:26 am

Austrian Horror Dad: I Was 'Born to Be a Rapist'
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
AP

VIENNA, Austria — Josef Fritzl, the Austrian builder who locked his daughter in a cellar and fathered seven children with her, sees himself as a born rapist, a victim of his own tyrannical mother.

According to the first leaked account of interviews with a forensic psychiatrist, which is due to appear in two Austrian newspapers today, Fritzl hatched his plan to incarcerate his daughter, Elisabeth, while he was in prison for rape.

“I have realized that I had a mean streak. For someone who was born to be a rapist, I have managed to contain myself for a relatively long period,” Fritzl is quoted as telling the psychiatrist in a 130-page report leaked to the tabloid newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Österreich.

Fritzl, 73, is awaiting trial for sexually abusing and incarcerating Elisabeth, 42, in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his house in the town of Amstetten. He fathered seven children by her, one of whom died shortly after birth and Fritzl burnt his body in an oven.

Three of the surviving children were allowed to live upstairs with him and wife, Rosemarie, 69, while their three siblings were condemned to a shadowy existence with their mother in the cellar. They never saw daylight until they were freed by police on April 26. It emerged that Fritzl had a previous criminal record for sexual offences.
In 1967 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for brutally raping a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home.

According to the report compiled by Dr. Adelheid Kastner, a prominent forensic psychiatrist who conducted in depth interviews with the builder, Fritzl found the “ideal solution” to his deranged fantasies after he was released from prison. It was then that he decided to lock up his daughter in the cellar so that he could “live out” his “evil side” while leading a seemingly normal life in the flat upstairs.

Fritzl told the psychiatrist that his relationship to women was shaped by his experience with his abusive mother, who allegedly beat him and isolated him from other children until he started school. He was an “alibi child,” Fritzl told the psychiatrist – his mother only had him to prove to her partner that she was not sterile.

Dr. Kastner came to the conclusion when she was dissecting the personality of Fritzl that the builder managed to distance himself from what he was doing by never looking his victim in the face when he raped her.

“He was not only incredibly able to lead a double life but also managed to maintain a triple life without any problems,” Dr. Kastner wrote, indicating that Fritzl played down the gravity of his crimes in his mind.

“Mr. Fritzl resembles a volcano; under the surface that appears almost banal there is an evil streak. He is torn apart by his desires that he cannot master,” Dr. Kastner wrote.

The report declared Fritzl clinically sane and fit for trial, but also diagnosed a “severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder”.

“It is to be expected that Mr. Fritzl would perpetrate deeds with severe consequences also in the future,” Dr. Kastner concluded.

On the basis of her report the prosecution has demanded from the court that Fritzl be tried and sentenced, then committed to an institution for the criminally insane, where he would receive psychiatric care and therapy including, if deemed necessary, medication.

The trial is expected to start early next year.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,442925,00.html




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:32 am

Fritzl describes himself as 'born rapist'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
www.independent.co.uk

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who held his daughter prisoner in a cellar for a quarter of a century and fathered seven children with her, has described himself to psychiatrists as a “born rapist” and revealed that he was habitually beaten by his mother who was bent on denigrating him.

In a confidential psychiatrists’ report that was leaked to the Austrian media today, Mr Fritzl revealed to his doctors: “ I have realised that I had an evil streak. But for someone who was born a rapist, I managed to control myself for some time.”

Mr Fritzl was arrested last spring, after police discovered the underground cellar beneath his home in the Austrian town of Amstetten where he kept his daughter Elizabeth in an underground cellar without daylight for 24 years. He is estimated to have raped her some 3,000 times.

The former engineer and property developer is currently being held in prison in the Austrian city of St Pölten where he has been subjected to a thorough psychiatric examination pending his trial early next year.

Dr Adelheid Kastner, the Austrian psychiatrist, wrote in her 13 page report, which was compiled on the basis of six interviews, that the self-confessed rapist was an “emotional cripple” who was “ unable to control his urges.” She recommended that he never be released from prison. “Whatever age he is there is considerable risk that he will re-offend.”

The psychiatrist went on to paint a bleak picture of Mr Fritzl’s childhood – a period during which he was repeatedly beaten and mistreated by his mother who claimed that she only gave birth to him to prove to other men that she was not infertile.

“His domestic situation was uncertain and he had to suffer a mother who demotivated him, denigrated him and was prone to violence,” Dr Kastner wrote. “It was a home which was absolutely devoid of security and lacking in understanding of the basic needs of a child.”

Mt Fritzl grew up without his father. As a child he suffered from an ailment which caused him severe pain every time he urinated. However his mother only took him to the doctor after a neighbour intervened and discovered how much he was suffering.

During World War II, his mother refused to go into a bomb shelter during air raids. Mr Fritzl had to go with neighbours and was tormented by the fear that he would emerge to find his mother dead.

Dr Kastner concluded that Mr Fritzl’s relationship with his mother left him “severely deformed” and with a permanent need to dominate women that resulted in his uncontrollable sexual urges. He told the psychiatrist that after kidnapping his daughter at the age of 18, he believed that his daughter would belong to him alone and that if she ever broke free, she would never be attractive to another man.

He claimed that whenever he raped his daughter, he felt ashamed that he had given in to his urges. “I could never look her in the face,” he is quoted as saying. “I could have done a lot worse to my daughter in the 24 years that I kept her in the cellar, but I used to put those urges into my work to keep them at bay.”

Dr Kastner concluded in her report that Mr Fritzl was fully aware of his actions throughout his daughter’s ordeal. “Therefore he must accept responsibility and that means he can go on trial,” she wrote.

Her report was said to have formed the basis of prosecution demands that Fritzl be tried and sentenced and then permanently committed to a psychiatric hospital where he would undergo therapy and possible medication.
http://tinyurl.com/6n5njy




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yankee-in-france PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 10:57 am

Fritzl says he was 'born to rape'

The Austrian father who allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years has said he was "born to rape", according to a leaked report.

The report by psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner says Joseph Fritzl's mother humiliated him in childhood, creating his need to "possess a human being".

Mr Fritzl said he had an "evil streak" and that he "could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter".

Mr Fritzl fathered seven children with his daughter in a cellar he built.

Dr Kastner says in her 130-page report that Mr Fritzl is fit for trial and would be "highly" likely to reoffend if he had the opportunity. A trial could begin in the next few months.

Mr Fritzl has been in custody since the case came to light in April.

'Volcano'

Dr Kastner's report has been submitted to the prosecutor's office but was leaked to the Austrian media.

In the report, Mr Fritzl, 73, tells the psychiatrist: "I was born to rape and I held myself back for a relatively long time."


Dr Kastner says Mr Fritzl spoke of humiliating and unprovoked attacks by his mother in childhood.

"His childhood made him susceptible to an emotional handicap," she writes, creating the need for him "to possess an entire human being".

The report says Mr Fritzl believed incarcerating his daughter, Elisabeth, meant he would have someone "just for me".

He believed having children with her would mean she would have to stay with him as she would "no longer hold any attraction for other men".

Mr Fritzl speaks of himself as a "volcano" who has a "flood of destructive lava that was barely controllable".

Prosecutors say Mr Fritzl has confessed to keeping Elisabeth captive in a cell at his home in Amstetten, west of Vienna.

DNA tests have shown he is the father of six of Elisabeth's children - a seventh child is believed to have died shortly after birth.

Elisabeth, 42, her six children and her mother Rosemarie have been undergoing psychiatric treatment and are thought to be at a secret location learning to resume a normal existence.

The case first came to light in April after 19-year-old Kerstin, one of the children fathered by Mr Fritzl, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7684511.stm
YIF
YIF



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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:19 pm

Deleted to put chronologically.

Last edited by PerryPeabody on Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:49 pm; edited 1 time in total




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:47 pm

PerryPeabody wrote:
Fritzl could be sent to mental institution
telegraph.co.uk
Last Updated: 4:47PM BST 15 Oct 2008

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar dungeon for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, could be put in a mental institution where he would receive psychiatric care and therapy instead of going to prison. Prosecutors are likely to demand that Fritzl be confined to a prison for the criminally insane. Earlier this week, Fritzl, 73, was declared clinically sane and fit for trial by a forensic psychiatrist, who, however, also diagnosed a "serious personality disorder".

Austrian prosecutors are now likely to use that diagnosis to demand that he be confined to a prison for the criminally insane, which is a mixture between a hospital and a penal institution, according to the Austrian broadsheet Die Presse.

The newspaper claims the move comes as a bid on behalf of prosecutors to ensure that Fritzl would never be allowed back into society again, as the maximum sentence he is likely to face at the trial is up to 15 years in prison for charges of rape, incest, incarceration and coercion.

Criminally insane offenders can only be released if an expert psychiatrist hired by a court confirms that they are no longer a threat to society, which, prosecutors believe, is not likely to take place in Fritzl's case.

One of the children born by his daughter Elisabeth, 42, died shortly after birth and Fritzl hurled his body in an incinerator. He is therefore also facing charges for manslaughter for the baby that died, which would however be difficult to prove in court due to lack of evidence as the baby died in 1996.

Prosecutors are also exploring the possibility of charging Fritzl with slavery under a Penal Law paragraph that has never been used before.

Austrian authorities would not comment on the reports, but a spokesman for the prosecutors confirmed that they could demand from the court to commit Fritzl to an asylum for the criminally insane, in addition to his prison sentence.

That means Fritzl would be sentenced in court and a judge would then have to decide whether to put him in prison or commit him to a mental institution for criminal offenders.

Alternatively, Fritzl could be also ordered to receive psychiatric care and therapy in a prison while serving his sentence.
http://tinyurl.com/43p24f




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:48 pm

Elisabeth Fritzl and children move into new home 29/10/2008
mirror.co.uk

Incest cellar mum Elisabeth Fritzl has bought a house and moved in with the six children she bore her father Josef, Austrian TV said yesterday.

The family home - bought with government funds - is in a secret location in the upper-Austria region near Amstetten where Elisabeth's 24-year nightmare ended in April.

Elisabeth, now 42, was imprisoned in a secret cellar built by rapist dad Josef, 74.

She had seven children by him - one of which Fritzl burned in an incinerator after it died shortly after birth.

Three children were raised by Elisabeth in Fritzl's cellar. The others lived upstairs with him and his wife, Rosemarie.

Elisabeth and all six of her children have been treated at a psychiatric centre since Kerstin, 19, the eldest cellar child, fell ill in the spring.
http://tinyurl.com/6azzw9




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:00 am

'I imprisoned my mother as well,' admits Josef Fritzl
Times Online
Bojan Pancevski, Vienna
October 30, 2008

Josef Fritzl kept his ailing mother locked-up in a sealed room until her death while he was preparing the cellar dungeon to imprison his daughter, reports claim.

Fritzl, 73, is awaiting trial for raping and incarcerating his daughter Elisabeth in a purpose-built cellar prison beneath his home in the town of Amstetten, where he fathered seven children with her during 24 years of captivity. One of the children, a baby boy called Michael, died shortly after birth and Fritzl burned his body in an incinerator.

Leaked court papers now reveal that, shortly before he locked up his daughter, the retired engineer and property developer also imprisoned his mother in the attic of her own house and even bricked up her windows so she would not have any daylight. He reportedly claims his actions were motivated by a desire for revenge as his mother severely abused him in his childhood.

“I never received any love from her; she beat me and kicked me until I was lying on the floor bleeding. I had a horrible fear from her and her incalculability. She kept insulting me and told me I was a Satan, a criminal, a no-good,” Fritzl told a court psychiatrist, according to the Austrian magazine News.

The quotes are extracted from a report by a forensic psychiatrist, who was commissioned by the court to examine Fritzl in six in-depth sessions. The confidential report, in which the psychiatrist declared Fritzl sane and fit for trial despite suffering from a “combined personality disorder,” was leaked to Austrian press ahead of the trial, which is expected to be set for January.

According to the leaked report quoted by News, Fritzl’s mother, who eked out their meagre living by working as a servant, raised him on her own after an acrimonious divorce, beating him and keeping him isolated from other children throughout his childhood. But Fritzl remained to live in her house in the Ybbs Street 40 in Amstetten, where he brought his wife and had seven children by her. He finally started abusing his mother in her old age up to a point when she virtually became his hostage, living under lock and key in a windowless room until her death in 1980, News magazine claims.

At the time his mother died Fritzl had already been building the concrete bunker in his cellar with the purpose of imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth, now 42. He finally lured her into the dungeon and locked her up in 1984.

Three of the children Fritzl subsequently had with his daughter were allowed to live in the large upstairs apartment with him and his wife Rosemarie, 69. The children aged 12 to 15 had a normal life and went to school, while their three siblings, aged five to 19, were forced to dwell in the dank cellar with their mother and never saw the light of day until they were freed by police in on April 26 this year.

According to the psychiatrist’s report quoted by Austrian press, Fritzl was dissatisfied with his wife and the children he had with her and turned to his incestuous family instead, believing he had been a good father to them despite his monstrous crimes. He also claims to have perceived his daughter Elisabeth as “his wife” after his real spouse started gaining weight and was no longer attractive to him.

“She [Rosemarie] became fat and I didn’t like that. The sons and daughters I had with Rosemarie gave me little physical affection. But the three children I had with Elisabeth and raised upstairs were very kind to me.

“Also the children in the cellar were extremely affectionate towards me. In any event, I always took very good care of the whole of my offspring.”

Fritzl reportedly supported his absurd claims that he had been a good father to his children in the cellar by saying that he would bring games and toys to their dungeon, even allowing them to keep a pet budgie and a goldfish.

“When I was with them we would all sit together and talk or watch television or cook together. We celebrated birthdays, Christmas and Easter,” Fritzl is reported as having said.

His claims are widely seen as a bid to justify his actions by the alleged childhood trauma and present his crimes in a more benign light, but also as a signal of his distorted perception of reality.

According to Dr Adelheid Kastner, the forensic psychiatrist who prepared the report, it also became apparent that Fritzl only used other people as instruments for satisfying his own twisted needs in a cold-blooded and calculated manner.

“His narcissism combines with the lack of empathy and exploitative way of turning others into instruments of satisfying his own needs. There is also a noticeable ability or tendency to ‘modify’ reality according to his own wishes,” Dr Kastner is quoted as having written in her report.

On the basis of Dr Kastner’s report, prosecutors will demand that Fritzl be tried and sentenced as a clinically sane person but then confined in an institution for the criminally insane for the rest of his life.

He is facing charges of manslaughter for the baby that died, as well as rape, coercion, incarcerating and incest.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5047152.ece




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 1:20 pm

Josef Fritzl found fit to stand trial
Published: Nov. 4, 2008

AMSTETTEN , Austria, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Austrian authorities say Josef Fritzl has been found fit to stand trial for allegedly imprisoning his daughter and his incestuous children locked in a cellar.

Fritzl, 73, of Armsetten, is to be formally charged Friday now that psychiatrists have ruled he is mentally stable, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Fritzl allegedly has confessed to imprisoning Elisabeth, 42, in the cellar of their home or 24 years and fathering her seven children, the Telegraph reported. The crimes Fritzl is to be charged with will not be made public until Nov. 14.
http://tinyurl.com/6hh2cd




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Katie PostPosted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 2:57 pm

PerryPeabody wrote:
Josef Fritzl found fit to stand trial
Published: Nov. 4, 2008

AMSTETTEN , Austria, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Austrian authorities say Josef Fritzl has been found fit to stand trial for allegedly imprisoning his daughter and his incestuous children locked in a cellar.

Fritzl, 73, of Armsetten, is to be formally charged Friday now that psychiatrists have ruled he is mentally stable, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Fritzl allegedly has confessed to imprisoning Elisabeth, 42, in the cellar of their home or 24 years and fathering her seven children, the Telegraph reported. The crimes Fritzl is to be charged with will not be made public until Nov. 14.
http://tinyurl.com/6hh2cd

Thank-you PerryPeabody, this is great news.




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 10:29 am

Austrian incest father Fritzl charged with murder
(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
VIENNA (Reuters) –

Austrian Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children by her, has been charged with the murder of one of their children who died shortly after birth.

Prosecutors said on Thursday they had also charged Fritzl, 73, with rape, enslavement, incest, coercion and deprivation of liberty. He has two weeks to appeal and does not need to enter a plea immediately.

Fritzl, who has been in investigative custody since the case was exposed in April, kept daughter Elisabeth in a soundproofed basement under his house in the central town of Amstetten.

He was charged with murder of the child through neglect in 1996. Fritzl burned the child's body in a furnace, police investigators said in April shortly after his arrest.

"He is suspected of killing this newborn because, despite knowing the life-threatening situation it was in, he was not driven to seek necessary help," the St Poelten provincial prosecutors' office said in a statement.

This is a straight murder charge under Austrian law.

A psychiatric report commissioned by justice authorities last month declared Fritzl to be mentally fit for a trial, which is expected to begin before a jury early next year. He could face life imprisonment if convicted of murder.

Repeated calls to Fritzl's lawyer went unanswered and the Austrian news agency APA reported that he had declined to comment on the case.

According to the police, Fritzl lured his daughter into the basement in 1984, drugged her and locked her up. He claimed she had disappeared to join a sect.

Three of Elisabeth's children were raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in their home after he pretended that his 'runaway' daughter had left them on his doorstep with a letter saying she could not care for them.

The other three children remained marooned in the windowless basement with their mother.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081113/ts_nm/us_austria_incest_4




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 11:52 am

Another Fritzl child died in lair
theage.com.au
Allan Hall , Berlin
November 15, 2008

JOSEF Fritzl fathered an eighth child with his captive daughter Elisabeth, it emerged last night.

She miscarried her first child alone in the darkness — a blow of such devastating magnitude that she thought about committing suicide.

The 27-page indictment against Fritzl, leaked to the Austrian media yesterday, reveals that he made his daughter watch pornographic films and then forced her to re-enact scenes in the rat-infested secret dungeon.

Fritzl, 74, was hit with a battery of charges this week, including murder over the death of a newborn twin boy who died in the gloom of his subterranean lair in 1996. He burned the child's corpse in the solid-fuel stove used to heat his house above ground in Amstetten, Austria.

But it emerged that the baby, named Michael, was not the only child to die in the dungeon. In November 1986, Elisabeth miscarried in the 10th week of pregnancy.

The prosecution indictment reveals Elisabeth was drugged in August 1984 and forced into the room that Fritzl had secretly carved out and hidden behind eight closed doors. He restrained her with chains attached to posts sunk into the floor — an 18-square-metre prison where she remained for the following nine months.

In 1994, her captor expanded the cellar to 40 square metres. This meant that for the first time those with Elisabeth in the dungeon — daughter Kerstin and son Stefan — had the chance to shower and to cook their own food. By this time Elisabeth had been underground for 10 years.

She has been told the public and media will be banned from the trial. The judge confirmed on Thursday that the entire process, apart from formalities on the first and last days, would be in camera.

Fritzl was also charged with rape, incest, false imprisonment and slavery, said the State Attorney's office in St Poelten, west of Vienna.

Prosecutors still do not know if any of the cellar children will give evidence. Doctors have warned that daughter Kerstin, 19, remains too disturbed by her ordeal to film a statement.

"There are two reasons why this trial will be behind closed doors. One, to protect Elisabeth and her children. And two, to stop it from becoming some sort of ghoulish daily freak show," said one Austrian legal expert.

Judges will introduce a pooling system to restrict access to a handful of journalists for the charges and final verdict.

Elisabeth's lawyer, Christoph Herbst, revealed that she had no plans to move out of the clinic, where she and her children live, before the trial.

The family was still under police protection and Elisabeth and her six children were still receiving therapy.
http://tinyurl.com/66z7vf




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PerryPeabody PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 10:36 am

Authorities under fire over 'British Fritzl' daughter rape caseInquiry under way after social services failed to investigate man who fathered nine children during 30 years of violent abuse
Esther Addley and agencies
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday November 26 2008 11.06

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2008/nov/26/british-fritzl-daughter-rape

An investigation has been launched into the failings of police and social services in the case of a father who made his two daughters pregnant 19 times during almost 30 years of rape and physical abuse.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given 25 life sentences yesterday. He will serve a minimum of 19 years and six months in prison.

He fathered nine children with his daughters, two of whom died at birth. The other 10 pregnancies were miscarried or terminated.

The case echoes that of the Austrian man Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter underground for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

The British man pleaded guilty last month to 25 counts of rape committed in the early 1980s and continuing until this year when the women finally sought help.

Child protection experts are questioning how the abuse was not detected by those who came into contact with the family.

Jayne Ludlam, the director of children's and young people's services at Sheffield city council, said social workers became aware of the "harrowing" abuse in June and an independent review into the case had been launched.

The court was told of several contacts with authorities who could have brought the case to the attention of police. The actions of Lincolnshire county council, and both Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire police, are to be investigated.

James Baird, representing the defendant, said: "It must be inconceivable to those who have listened to this case that these offences have been carried out, in this day and age in a so-called civilised society, over such a long time and with such consequences, without them being reported or investigated.

"All the signs were indicative of an incestuous relationship. It is my submission that despite these circumstances and real suspicion, nothing was done by Lincolnshire social services or Sheffield social services about how any woman could endure these pregnancies."

Sheffield crown court heard how the British man, who is 56 and divorced, began abusing the sisters when they were between eight and 10, and that they were badly beaten to make them comply.

He "took pleasure" in assaulting the girls, the court heard, and the violent attacks would stop only while the children were pregnant.

"His younger daughter told of the frightening habit her father had of putting her head next to the flames of their gas fire and that when she struggled to get away on certain occasions she burnt her eyes," the prosecutor, Nicholas Campbell QC, told the court. They were kept out of school when their injuries were visible and the family moved repeatedly to avoid suspicion. The girls' mother left in the early 1990s; a brother lived with them until his teens.

The court heard that in 1988 suspicions were raised at the victims' school due to their injuries, but these were blamed on bullying. One of the women was asked by a doctor if her father was the father of her children, but she denied it. The girls called Childline, the court was told, and asked for a guarantee that their children would not be taken away, but hung up when this assurance could not be given.

In sentencing, the judge, Alan Goldsack QC, said: "The phrase 'it is difficult to imagine a worse case' is much overused and rarely, if ever, true. But I can say that in nearly 40 years of dealing with criminal cases and 14 as a family judge the combination of aggravating circumstances here is the worst I have come across.

"Due to the seriousness of this case an independent review has already been launched which will look into the circumstances surrounding the case and the contact the agencies had with the victims."




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