No image available
/ 17 September 2009
An Australian man raped his daughter almost daily for 30 years in a case that echoes the incest crimes of Josef Fritzl in Austria.
No image available
/ 8 September 2009
It’s going to be difficult for Jaycee Dugard and her parents, who lost an 11-year-old girl and found a woman. They won’t know her.
It’s a fudge, of course, but it seems to be a highly seductive fudge. Tabloid headlines around the world have repeatedly labelled him a monster.
Psychiatrist Heidi Kastner interviewed Fritzl repeatedly. She talks about how his mind works — and how the case affected her.
Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a psychiatric institution on Thursday for locking up and raping his daughter over 24 years.
A court psychiatrist yesterday described how Josef Fritzl had locked up his daughter as a way of compensating for a loveless childhood.
An Austrian who fathered seven children with a daughter he locked in a cellar for 24 years pleaded guilty on Wednesday to enslavement and murder.
She pulled back the lid of the cardboard box, and invited the jurors to take a sniff. It was a chance to experience the rancid stink of the cellar.
The windowless space had no heating, no hot water, no sunlight or fresh air, but it was Elisabeth Fritzl’s home and that of her children for 24 years.
No image available
/ 13 November 2008
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.
No image available
/ 23 October 2008
Josef Fritzl, the man who kept his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered her seven children, has told a psychiatrist he was ”born to rape”.
Elisabeth Fritzl, the Austrian woman who was held hostage in a cellar by her father for 24 years, has begun to tell her story to prosecutors.
The family of Austrian incest father Josef Fritzl has been able to enjoy outdoor activities and even leave the clinic where they are staying.
Josef Fritzl, the man who incarcerated his daughter beneath his home for 24 years, has issued a frank confession from his cell, in which he has said he was driven by an addiction which ”got out of control”. Fritzl (73) said: ”I knew that what I was doing was not right, that I must be mad for doing such a thing.”
An Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years insisted he is ”no monster”, but that he could have killed his daughter and her children without anyone knowing, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Josef Fritzl’s claims were published as the 73-year-old was interviewed by prosecutors for the first time.
Josef Fritzl began planning the dungeon in which he incarcerated his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years when she was 12 and was so meticulous that he provided his ”downstairs family” with ultraviolet rays, vitamin tablets and an aquarium, Austrian officials said on Monday. Police said Fritzl (73) began to plan his secret bunker as early as 1978.
Behind all the words, the turning over of facts, the analysis, the frantic speculation (did the wife know?) and the tormented search for meanings (how could this happen?), lies a central image: a woman and her three children buried alive, toothless, hunchbacked, pale-skinned, talking in their own mumbling language, just beneath the surface of everyday life for 24 years.
For Paul Hörer, who first met Josef Fritzl 35 years ago, the Austrian was a ”decent, outgoing and, above all, amusing bloke”. He remembered how Fritzl came to stay with him in Munich, and how he and his family spent happy evenings with Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie, on the terrace of their ”tip top” house in Amstetten.
Austrian police say the man who held his daughter prisoner for 24 years and fathered seven children with her had no accomplices and planned his crime too meticulously to have been caught any earlier. Josef Fritzl (73) has admitted to keeping his daughter locked in a windowless bunker, repeatedly sexually assaulting her and later imprisoning their children.
Psychologists experienced in helping the victims of sexual abuse and prolonged isolation say that great care will need to be used in trying to bring some normality to the lives of Elisabeth Fritzl and her children. Elisabeth ”may have been compliant because she had her children to protect,” said Lesley Perman-Kerr, who is in private practice in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
”Astonishing” and ”moving”, were the words used by psychiatrists on Tuesday to describe the scene as Elisabeth Fritzl and five of her children were reunited for the first time. The meeting followed years of separation after three of the children fathered through incest by Josef Fritzl were ”chosen” to live above ground.
DNA tests showed that Austrian Josef Fritzl, who raped his daughter and kept her prisoner in a windowless cellar for 24 years, was the father of her six surviving children, police said on Tuesday. Fritzl has confessed to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth in the cellar beneath their two-storey home and fathering seven children by her.