Man rapes own daughter

A 38-year-old man from Ha-Malelu in Rothe allegedly told his 17-year-old daughter that they should be “lovers as women were giving him problems”, the magistrate’s court heard on Tuesday.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the minor, allegedly raped the daughter over a period of three months. The teenager was staying with his father and a 13-year-old sister as their mother is late.
‘Mamonaheng Lesofe, a counsellor in the victim-friendly office at the magistrate’s court, told the court that she visited the victim when the matter was brought to her attention on September 28.
Lesofe said the daughter had confided in her that the accused had told her that they should be lovers as women were giving him problems.
“They (daughter and father) had a sexual relationship, they seemed like lovers. But the daughter said they were no longer doing it as some villagers now knew about it,” Lesofe told the court.
She said the daughter had since been admitted at a children’s home in Mazenod and was receiving counselling.
The accused’s lawyer Advocate Lebohang Molapo earlier on told the magistrate’s court that his client should be granted bail as it was his constitutional right.
Molapo said the court should instead impose stringent conditions to ensure that his client did not interfere with the principal witness.
He said his client works at a company that makes tombstones and earns M1 000 a month.
“I therefore ask the court to give him bail not exceeding M500 as he does not earn much,” Molapo asked the court.
Public prosecutor Qinimutsi Tshabalala however opposed the granting of bail saying the accused was facing a serious charge.
“(The accused) is facing a serious case whereby he had sexual intercourse with his daughter,” Tshabalala said.
Tshabalala said the accused cannot be trusted to live with the child as he had abused her physically, mentally and emotionally.
He said the accused had created a pathetic situation for the daughter and was an unrepentant abuser.
He said if ever the court were to give him bail, chances were high that he was going to rape his daughter again.
Maseru magistrate ‘Makopano Taole rejected the lawyer’s appeal for bail.
“After listening to the reasons from your lawyer asking for bail on your behalf and the prosecution giving reasons why you should not get bail, the court refuses to grant you bail,” Taole said.
The case was postponed to November 6.

 

 

Fritzl case

The Fritzl case emerged in April 2008 when a -year-old woman, Elisabeth Fritzl (born April6, 1966, ), stated to police in the town ofAmstetten, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years in a concealed corridor part of the basement area of the family home, a condominium-style apartment complex built by her father, Josef Fritzl (born April 9,1935 ), and that Fritzl had physically assaulted, sexually abused, and raped her numerous times during her imprisonment. The incestuous relationship forced upon her by her father resulted in the birth of seven children and one miscarriage.
Elisabeth Fritzl’s confinement
Three of the children were imprisoned along with their mother Elisabeth for the whole of their lives: daughter Kerstin, aged , and sons Stefan, , and Felix, . One child, Michael, died of respiratory problems three days after birth, having been deprived of all medical help; his body was incinerated by Josef Fritzl on his property. The three other children were raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie in the upstairs home. Fritzl engineered the appearance of these children as foundlings discovered outside his house: Lisa at nine months in , Monika at ten months in , and Alexander at  months in . When the eldest daughter, Kerstin, became seriously ill, Josef acceded to Elisabeth’s pleas to take her to a hospital, triggering a series of events that eventually led to discovery.
Josef Fritzl’s arrest

Josef Fritzl, aged 73, was arrested on April ,  on suspicion of serious crimes against family members and went on trial in Sankt Pölten, Austria on March , . He was charged with incest, rape, coercion, false imprisonment, enslavement and the negligent homicide of the infant Michael. After a four day trial from which the public and the media were largely excluded, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Case history

Austrian man kept daughter prisoner in cellar for  24 years

Police: Austrian children kept in dungeon were in ‘oppressive’ conditionsTrial date scheduled for Austrian man who kept his daughter in a dungeon for  yearsAustrian man who imprisoned daughter pleads guilty at start of trialJosef Fritzl was born on April ,  in Amstetten, Austria. In , at the age of , he married Rosemarie, , with whom he had seven children: two sons and five daughters including Elisabeth, who was born in . He reportedly began abusing Elisabeth in  when she was  11 years old.
After completing compulsory education at age , Elisabeth started a training course to become a waitress. In January , she ran away from home and, together with a friend from work, went into hiding in Vienna. She was found by police within three weeks and returned to her pare nts. She rejoined her training course and, upon completion in mid-, was offered a job in the nearby city of Linz.
Years of captivity
On August 29,1984 , Elisabeth’s father lured her into the basement of the family home under the pretense that he needed help with carrying a door. He sedated her with ether and moved her into a small concealed underground chamber.
After Elisabeth’s disappearance, her mother filed a missing person report. Almost a month later, her father handed over a letter to the police, the first of several that Elisabeth was forced to write while in captivity. The letter was postmarked Braunau. It stated that she was staying with a friend and was tired of living with her family, warning her parents not to look for her or she would leave the country. Her father told police that she had most likely joined a religious sect.
Over the course of the following  years, Fritzl visited her in the hidden cellar on average once every three days to bring food and other supplies. After his arrest, he admitted that he repeatedly had sexual intercourse with his own daughter and had done so against her will.
Elisabeth gave birth to seven children during her captivity. One child died shortly after birth, and three – Lisa, Monika and Alexander – were removed from the cellar as infants to live with Fritzl and his wife. They adopted Lisa, Monika, and Alexander; they became the three children’sfoster parents with the knowledge of local social services authorities. Officials said that Fritzl “very plausibly” explained how three of his infant grandchildren had appeared on his doorstep. The family received regular visits from social workers, who did not hear complaints or notice anything to arouse their suspicions.
Following the birth of the fourth child in , Fritzl enlarged the prison for Elisabeth and her children from  m ( sq ft) to  m( sq ft). The captives had a television, radio, and video cassette player. Food could be stored in a refrigerator and cooked or heated on hot plates. Elisabeth taught the children to read and write. At times in order to punish them, Fritzl shut off the lights to the basement or refused to deliver food for several days at a time.
Fritzl told Elisabeth and the three children (Kerstin, Stefan, and Felix) who remained in the cellar that they would be gassed if they tried to escape; investigators concluded that this was an empty threat to frighten the captives as there was no gas supply to the basement. Fritzl stated after his arrest that it was sufficient to tell them not to meddle with the cellar door or otherwise they would receive an electric shock and die.
According to his sister-in-law Christine, Fritzl went into the basement every morning at  o’clock, ostensibly to draw plans for machines, which he sold to firms. Often he stayed down there for the night – his wife was not even allowed to bring him coffee. A tenant, who rented a ground floor room in the house for  years, said he heard noises from the basement but Fritzl said it was the gas heating system.
Discovery
On April 19,2008 , Kerstin the eldest daughter, fell unconscious, and Josef Fritzl agreed to seek medical attention. Elisabeth helped Fritzl carry Kerstin out of the dungeon and saw the outside world for the first time in  years. She was then made to return to the dungeon where she would remain for a final week. Kerstin was taken by ambulance to a local hospital (Landesklinikum Amstetten) and admitted in serious condition with life-threatening kidney failure. Fritzl later arrived at the hospital claiming to have found a note written by Kerstin’s mother. He discussed Kerstin’s condition and the note with Dr. Albert Reiter. Medical staff found aspects of the story to be puzzling and alerted the police on April , who then broadcast an appeal via public media for the missing mother to come forward and provide additional information about Kerstin’s medical history. The police then reopened the case file on missing Elisabeth. Fritzl repeated his story about Elisabeth being in a cult, and presented what, he claimed, was the “most recent letter” from her, dated January . It was posted from the town ofKematen.
The police contacted Manfred Wohlfahrt, a church officer responsible for collecting information on religious cults. Wohlfahrt raised doubts about the existence of the cult. He noted that Elisabeth’s letters seemed dictated and oddly written. The news covered some of these issues and Elisabeth watched the story on the cellar television. She pleaded with her father to be taken to the hospital. On April , Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs. Fritzl told his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come back after a -year absence. Governor Lenze told ORF that Fritzl had telephoned him and thanked him and the social services for looking after his family during his granddaughter Kerstin’s illness. Fritzl and Elisabeth went to the hospital where Kerstin was being treated on April , . Following a tip-off from Dr. Albert Reiter, that Fritzl and Elisabeth were at the hospital, the police detained them on the hospital grounds and took them to a police station for questioning.
Elisabeth did not provide police with more details until they promised her that she would never have to see her father again. Then, over the next two hours, she told the story of her  years in captivity. Shortly after midnight, police officers completed the three pages of minutes of the interrogation. Josef Fritzl was arrested on suspicion of serious crimes against family members, facing possible charges of false imprisonment, rape, manslaughter by negligence, and incest. During the night of April , Elisabeth, her children and her mother Rosemarie were taken into care.
Josef Fritzl confessed on April ,  to having imprisoned his daughter for  years and having fathered her seven children. Police said Fritzl told investigators how to enter the basement prison through a small hidden door, opened by a secret keyless entry code. Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, had been unaware of what had been happening to Elisabeth.
On April , , it was announced that DNA evidence confirmed Fritzl as the biological father of his daughter’s children.
Fritzl’s defence lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said that although the DNA test proved incest, evidence was still needed for the other allegations: “The allegations of rape and enslaving people have not been proven. We need to reassess the confessions made so far.”
In their May ,  daily press conference, Austrian police said that Fritzl had forced Elisabeth to write a letter the previous year indicating that he may have been planning to release her and the children. The letter said that she wanted to come home but “it’s not possible yet”.Police believe Fritzl intended to pretend he had rescued his daughter from her fictional cult. In the same press conference, police spokesman Franz Polzer said the investigation would probably last a few months, as police planned on interviewing at least  people who had lived as tenants in the Fritzl apartment building in the previous  years.
Dungeon
The Fritzl property in Amstetten is a building dating from around  and a newer building, which was added after , when Fritzl applied for a building permit for an “extension with basement”. In , building inspectors visited the site and verified that the new extension had been built according to the dimensions specified on the building permit. Fritzl had illegally created additional room by excavating space for a much larger basement, concealed by walls. Around  or , according to his statement, he started to turn this hidden cellar into a prison cell and installed a washbasin, a toilet, a bed, a hot plate and a refrigerator. In , he added more space by creating a passageway to a pre-existing basement area under the old part of the property, which only he knew of.
The concealed cellar had a  m (. yd) long corridor, a storage area, and three small open cells, connected by narrow passageways: a basic cooking area and bathroom facilities, followed by two sleeping areas, which were equipped with two beds each. It covered an area of approximately  m ( sq ft). The ceilings were no more than . m (. ft) high.
The hidden cellar had two access points: a hinged door that weighed  kg (, lb) which is thought to have become unusable over the years because of its weight, and a metal door, reinforced with concrete and on steel rails that weighed  kg ( lb) and measured  m (. ft) high and  cm ( ft) wide. It was located behind a shelf in Fritzl’s basement workshop, protected by an electronic code entered using a remote control unit. In order to reach this door, five locking basement rooms had to be crossed. To get to the area where Elisabeth and her children were held, eight doors in total needed to be unlocked, of which two doors were additionally secured by electronic locking devices.
Key events
The key events, in this case, are as follows:
Date Key event Fritzl begins sexually abusing his -year-old daughter, Elisabeth. to Fritzl begins to turn the hidden cellar into a prison cell.August , Fritzl lures Elisabeth, now  years old, into the basement and imprisons her.November Elisabeth has a miscarriage in the th week of pregnancy. The first child, Kerstin, is born, and lives in the cellar until . Stefan is born. He, too, stays in the cellar until . Lisa is born. In May , when she is nine months old, she is discovered outside the family home in a cardboard box, allegedly left there by Elisabeth, along with a note asking for the child to be looked after.February The fourth child, Monika, is born. Fritzl enlarges the prison for Elisabeth and her children from  m² ( sq ft) to  m² ( sq ft).December Ten-month-old Monika is found in a stroller outside the entrance of the house. Shortly afterwards, a phone call is made to Rosemarie, apparently, from Elisabeth. The caller asks Rosemarie to take care of the child. However, it is assumed that Fritzl was able to use a recording of Elisabeth’s voice to make the call. Rosemarie reported the incident to the police, expressing her astonishment that Elisabeth knew their new and unlisted phone number.May Elisabeth gives birth to twin boys. One dies after three days; Fritzl removes his body from the cellar and cremates it. The surviving twin, Alexander, is taken upstairs when he is  months old. He is “discovered” in circumstances similar to those of his two sisters.December Felix is born. According to a statement by Fritzl, he kept Felix in the cellar, together with Elisabeth and her two eldest children, because his wife was not able to look after another child.April , Fritzl arranges for the critically ill -year-old Kerstin to be taken to a local hospital.April , During the evening, Fritzl releases Elisabeth from the cellar along with her sons Stefan and Felix, bringing them upstairs, informing his wife that Elisabeth had decided to come home after a -year absence. Later that evening, after an anonymous tipoff during a visit to the hospital, Fritzl and Elisabeth are taken into police custody where she reveals her decades-long imprisonment during questioning.March , After a  day trial in the town of St. Pölten, Fritzl pleads guilty to the charges of the murder by negligence of his infant son/grandson, Michael, as well as the enslavement, incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment of his daughter, Elisabeth, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.Aftermath
Elisabeth Fritzl and her family
After being taken into care, Elisabeth, all six of her surviving children and her mother were housed in a local clinic where they were shielded from the outside environment and received medical and psychological treatment. A local government official speculated on the need to give members of the Fritzl family new identities but emphasized that it was a choice for the family to make.
Owing to their lack of exposure to sunlight, the former captives were extremely pale and could not endure natural light. They were reported to have vitamin D deficiencies and were anemic. They were expected to have underdeveloped immune systems. The clinic head, Berthold Kepplinger, said that the family members needed to stay at the clinic for several months, and that Elisabeth and the two children held captive in the cellar required further therapy to help them adjust to the light after years in semi-darkness. They also needed treatment to help them cope with all the extra space that they now had in which to move about.
In May , a handmade poster created by Elisabeth, her children and her mother at the therapy facility was displayed in the Amstetten town center. The message thanked local people for their support. “We, the whole family, would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you for sympathy at our fate,” they wrote in their message. “Your compassion is helping us greatly to overcome these difficult times, and it shows us there also are good and honest people here who really care for us. We hope that soon there will be a time where we can find our way back into a normal life.”
Kerstin was reunited with her family on June , , when she was awakened from her artificially induced coma. Doctors said she will make a full recovery.
It was revealed that Elisabeth and her children were more traumatized than previously thought. During captivity, Kerstin tore out her hair in clumps, and was reported to have shredded her dresses before stuffing them in the toilet. Stefan was unable to walk properly, due to his height of . m ( ft  in), forced to stoop in the . m ( ft  in)-high cellar. It has also been revealed that normal everyday occurrences, such as the dimming of lights or the closing of doors, plunge Kerstin and Stefan into anxiety and panic attacks. The other three of Elisabeth’s children who were raised by their father are being treated for anger and resentment at the events.
In late July , it emerged that Elisabeth Fritzl ordered her mother Rosemarie out of the villa they have been sharing in a secret location set up for them by a psychiatric clinic. Elisabeth Fritzl was upset about “the huge issue of Rosemarie’s passiveness during Elisabeth’s upbringing — a tortured time when, she says, her brutal father Josef began abusing her when she was just  years old.”
In March , Elisabeth and her children were forced to move out of the family’s hide-away home and returned to the psychiatric clinic where medical staff had started trying to heal the family and unite the upstairs and downstairs siblings during the previous year. She was reported to be distraught and close to a breakdown after a British paparazzo had burst into her kitchen and started taking photographs.
On March ,  Elisabeth Fritzl attended the second day of the criminal trial against her father Josef, in preparation for a book she is to write about her ordeal.
After the trial, Elisabeth and her six children were moved to an unnamed village in northern Austria, where they are living in a fortress-like house. All of the children require ongoing therapy — the “upstairs” children who learned the truth about the lies that their father told them about their mother abandoning them and the abuse they received from their father/grandfather during their childhood, the fact that their siblings were imprisoned in the cellar which none of them knew about at first, and the “downstairs children” for their deprivation from normal development and lack of fresh air and sunshine and the abuse that they also received, as their mother Elisabeth had, from their father/grandfather when he visited them in the basement. All of the children might possibly have genetic problems common to children born of an incestuous relationship. Although Elisabeth is said to be estranged from her mother, Rosemarie — who accepted Fritzl’s story about Elisabeth joining a cult and did not pursue the matter further — Elisabeth allows her three children who grew up in Josef and Rosemarie’s house to visit their grandmother regularly. Rosemarie lives alone in a small apartment.
In June , an Austrian newspaper reported that Elisabeth Fritzl had begun a relationship with one of her bodyguards, identified only as Thomas W. The couple is living together.
Josef Fritzl

Mugshot of Josef Fritzl on the night of his arrest.Biography
Josef Fritzl was born on April ,  in Amstetten, Federal State of Austria, to Josef Fritzl, Sr. and Maria Fritzl. He grew up as an only child raised solely by his working mother. His father had deserted the family when Fritzl was four, and never again came into contact with him. His father, Josef Fritzl, Sr, later fought as a soldier in the Wehrmacht during World War II, and was killed in action in . His name appears on a memorial plaque in Amstetten.
After completing his education at an HTL technical college with a qualification in electrical engineering, he started work at a steel company in Linz. In , at the age of , he married Rosemarie, , with whom he had two sons and five daughters.
In , he served a sentence for raping a woman. After prison, he obtained a job in a construction material firm in Amstetten where he worked from –. Later, he became a technical equipment salesman, traveling throughout Austria.
In , he purchased a guesthouse and an adjacent campsite at Lake Mondsee. He ran it, together with his wife, until .
He retired from active employment when he became  years old in , but continued some commercial activities thereafter.
In addition to the apartment house in Amstetten, where he lived, he owned several other properties which he rented out.
Criminal record
Josef Fritzl was convicted for raping a -year old woman in the city of Linz in  and sentenced to  months in jail. According to an annual report for  and a press release of the same year, he was also named as a suspect in a case of attempted rape and known forindecent exposure. More than  years later, when he applied for the adoption of one child and foster care for two others, of children to whom his daughter Elisabeth had given birth, his criminal record was not made available to local social service authorities since it had been expunged in accordance with Austrian law.
Self-portrayal and psychiatric assessment
After his arrest, Josef Fritzl claimed that his behaviour toward his daughter did not constitute rape but was consensual. His defense lawyer Rudolf Mayer forwarded extracts from the minutes of his talks with his client to the Austrian weekly News for publication. According to these statements, Fritzl said that he “always knew during the whole  years that what I was doing was not right, that I must have been crazy to do such a thing, yet it became a normal occurrence to lead a second life in the basement of my house.”
Regarding his treatment of the family he had with his wife, he stated, “I am not the beast the media make me to be”. Regarding his treatment of Elisabeth and her children in the cellar, he explained that he brought flowers for Elisabeth and books and toys for the children into the “bunker”, as he called it, and often watched videos with the children and ate meals with Elisabeth and the children. Fritzl decided to imprison Elisabeth after she “did not adhere to any rules any more” when she became a teenager. “That is why I had to do something; I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world.” He suggested that the emphasis on discipline in the Nazi era, during which he grew up, might have influenced his views about decency and good behaviour. The chief editors of News Magazine noted in their editorial that they expected Fritzl’s statement to form the basis of the defence strategy of his lawyer. Critics said his statement may have been a ploy to prepare an insanity defence.
Reflecting on his childhood, Fritzl initially described his mother as “the best woman in the world” and “as strict as it was necessary”.Later, he expressed a negative opinion of his mother and claimed that “she used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. It left me feeling totally humiliated and weak. My mother was a servant and she used to work hard all her life, I never had a kiss from her, I was never cuddled although I wanted it – I wanted her to be good to me.” Eventually, he also admitted he had later locked his mother in her room and bricked up her window after telling neighbors that she died, and kept her locked up until her death in .
In a report by forensic psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner, Fritzl’s mother is described as unpredictable and abusive. Fritzl referred to himself as an “alibi” child, meaning that his mother only gave birth to him to prove that she was not barren and could produce children. Fritzl claims that hispathological behaviour is innate. He admits that he planned to lock his daughter up during his prison stint for the earlier rape conviction so that he could contain and express his “evil side”. He said, “I was born to rape, and I held myself back for a relatively long time. I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter.” The forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Fritzl as having severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder and recommended that Fritzl receive psychiatric care for the rest of his life.
Recent reports have brought to light Fritzl’s premeditated plan to lock his daughter up not for discipline but for his own gratification.
Prosecutor’s investigation
In keeping with the agreement that she would never have to see her father again, Elisabeth Fritzl gave a videotaped testimony before Austrian prosecutors and investigators on July , . Christiane Burkheiser, a state prosecutor, and Josef’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, in an adjoining room took part in the process. Josef Fritzl was not present but remained in the Sankt Pölten jail. The testimony, which was not made public, was presented at Fritzl’s trial in March .
Judge Andrea Humer, who presided over the trial, stated medical experts reported Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were in “relatively good health”.
Lawyer Christoph Herbst who represents Elisabeth Fritzl and family, said “fortunately, everything is going very well,” as they spend time to answer the hundreds of letters sent worldwide. Felix, Kerstin, and Stefan, brought up underground with their mother, have learned to swim for the first time. And all of Elisabeth’s children attended a four-day summer camp organized by firefighters with , other young campers, in the later part of the summer in August . The children along with their mother also made day trips, including swimming outings, on which care was taken to keep them out of reach of the paparazzi and to protect their privacy.
On November , , authorities in Austria released an indictment against Josef Fritzl. He would stand trial for the murder of the infant Michael, who died shortly after birth, and face between  years and life imprisonment. He was also charged with rape, incest, kidnapping, false imprisonment and slavery, which carry a maximum -year term.
Excerpts of Elisabeth’s diary were leaked to the media on March , . Prosecutors confirmed that the diary was part of their evidence against Josef Fritzl.
Austria’s reputation
Describing the “abominable events” as linked to one individual case, then-Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer said he planned to launch an image campaign to restore the country’s reputation abroad.
Trial of Josef Fritzl
The trial of Josef Fritzl commenced on March ,  in the town of Sankt Pölten, presided over by Judge Andrea Humer.

Journalists during the Fritzl trialOn day one, Fritzl entered the courtroom attempting to hide his face from cameras behind a blue folder, which he was entitled to do under Austrian law. After opening comments, all journalists and spectators were asked to leave the courtroom, whereupon Fritzl lowered his binder. Fritzl pleaded guilty to all charges with the exception of murder and grievous assault by threatening to gas his captives if they disobeyed him.
In his opening remarks, Rudolf Mayer, the defending counsel, appealed to the jury to be objective and not be swayed by emotions. He insisted Fritzl was “not a monster,” noting that Fritzl had brought a Christmas tree down to his captives in the cellar during the holiday season.
Christiane Burkheiser, prosecuting her first case since being appointed Chief Prosecutor, pressed for life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane. She demonstrated for jurors the low height of the ceiling in the cellar dungeon by making a mark on the door to the courtroom at m  cm ( ft .in), and described the cellar as “damp and mouldy,” passing around a box of musty objects taken from the cellar, whose odor made jurors flinch.
On the first day of testimony, jurors watched an -hour testimony recorded by Elisabeth in sessions with police and psychologists in July . The tape is said to have been so “harrowing” that the eight jurors did not watch more than two hours at a time. Four replacement jurors were on standby to replace any of the regular jurors in case they could not bear to hear any more of the evidence.
Besides the video testimony, Elisabeth’s older brother Harald testified, as did a doctor specialising in neonatal medicine and the court psychiatrist. Josef’s wife, Rosemarie, and Elisabeth’s children refused to testify.
Fritzl’s attorney, Rudolf Mayer, confirmed that a disguised Elisabeth sat in the visitors’ gallery during the second day of proceedings, at the time her video testimony was aired. “Josef Fritzl recognised that Elisabeth was in court and, from this point on, you could see Josef Fritzl going pale and he broke down,” Mayer said. “It was a meeting of eyes that changed his mind.” The next day, Fritzl began the proceedings by approaching the judge and changing his pleas to guilty on all charges.
On March , , Fritzl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for  years. He said that he accepted the sentence and would not appeal. Fritzl is currently serving out his sentence in Garsten Abbey, a former monastery in Upper Austria that has been converted into a prison. He is in a special section of the prison for the criminally insane.

click on the following link to download the docu on fritzl “story of the monster”

Confession: Josef Fritzl says he locked his daughter in a cellar for nearly 24 years

 

This is the man who today confessed that he imprisoned his daughter in an underground chamber for 24 years and fathered her seven children.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, was raped repeatedly since being lured into the dungeon built below the family home in a small Austrian town. Police said she had been “broken” by the experience.

Josef Fritzl, 73, admitted to police that all the children were his.

Three of them – Kerstin, 19, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five – were held captive with their mother in a series of windowless rooms and never saw the sunlight until they were freed on Saturday.

Incredibly, three others, Alexander, 12, Monika, 14, and Lisa, 16, were raised in the home by Fritzl and his wife. They were adopted by the couple and went to school, leading apparently normal lives.

The other child, a twin, died shortly after birth and the body burned by Fritzl in a boiler. Detectives today revealed details of the complex of rooms where Elisabeth was held since August 1984.

The three children kept prisoner with her were born there and are thought to have spent their entire lives underground.

Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, said: “He has now said that he locked up his daughter for 24 years and that he alone fathered her seven children and that he locked them up in the cellar.”

The case echoes that of Natascha Kampusch who was kept in a cellar by a paedophile in Vienna for eight years from the age of 10 until she escaped last year.

Police are now trying to discover how Fritzl managed to keep his daughter as a sex slave without the apparent knowledge of his 60-year-old wife Rosemarie at the three-storey house in Amstetten, 80 miles west of Vienna.

Elisabeth was this afternoon said to be suffering from a serious physical condition which was deteriorating.

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Bathroom: Bright decorations cannot disguise the ramshackle state of the hiding place 

Sinister: The narrow corridor that leads to the cramped cellar where Elisabeth Fritzl was locked up for 24 years 

Captive: This tiny door led into the sequence of underground rooms where the four were held 

Elisabeth, who was described as pale and malnourished with hair that had turned white, has told police she was held captive since shortly after her 19th birthday, having been abused by her father since the age of 11.

Detectives said she appeared “greatly disturbed” during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be protected.

Fritzl, an electrical engineer, had built a series of connected chambers, less than six feet high, behind a concealed door at the house.

The chambers had areas for sleeping, cooking and washing. Investigators said the basement labyrinth even contained a padded cell.

They refused to show pictures of rooms where the children had been born and hwere the four slept. It is believed the complex extended out beneath a plot of land at the rear of the family home.

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Elisabeth Fritzl, left, as a teenager and Monika, 14, one of her daughters allowed to leave the dungeon 

The only door to the complex was controlled by an electronic lock that only he knew the code for. Fritzl was arrested yesterday and the children have been taken into care.

His wife told detectives she was unaware of the imprisonment and years of sexual abuse taking place in the basement. Amazingly, the couple also rented rooms to lodgers who failed to notice that anything was amiss.

The three imprisoned children were taught to read and write by their mother with Fritzl passing clothing and food through a hatch. A tube provided ventilation.

Their extraordinary captivity only ended when Kerstin fell seriously ill and had to be taken to hospital nine days ago. Police said the 18-year-old had been “surprised” when Fritzl allowed her to go to the hospital.

It was the first time she had left the dungeon.

Doctors found a handwritten note in unconscious Kerstin’s pocket. It was from her mother — begging medics to save her daughter.

Baffled by the illness, the hospital launched an appeal for missing Elisabeth to come forward and provide her medical history. Fritzl freed Elisabeth and the other two children. Kerstin remains in a coma.

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Dark secret: The banal facade of Fritzl’s house in the Austrian town of Amstetten 

Prison: An aerial shot of the Fritzl house, where Elisabeth was held captive for 24 years 

Today police said that when he was arrested, he initially said “nothing” although he was now co-operating with officers.

“He led a double life for 24 years,” said Mr Polzer. “The family lived upstairs. He had children with his own daughter who lived downstairs.

“He did not want to give any details to officers who investigated it.”

Mr Polzer said of the underground chamber: “There are a number of rooms. Everything is very, very narrow and the victim herself, the mother of these children, told us that this was continually enlarged over the years.”

Police are looking at planning records to see if Fritzl ever notified authorities about the building work.

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Family of mystery: Daughter Lisa, who lived a normal life, Fritzl’s wife Rosemarie and his second son, Alexander at the age of 12 

Fritzl had fooled the authorities over the years by telling them that his ” missing” daughter had mysteriously returned on three occasions – in 1993, 1994 and 1997 – to dump three children on his doorstep.

He claimed each time she had left a note saying she was unable to look after them and persuaded authorities she had left to join a cult.

Fritzl and his daughter were picked up on Saturday close to the hospital where Kerstin is being treated.

He kept Elisabeth prisoner by telling her the cellar was booby trapped to explode if she attempted to escape.

Police took the retired electrician with them to discover not just the secret opening to the underground cell, which only he knew, but to slowly,carefully gain entrance because of the fear of hidden explosives.

Held captive: Natascha Kampusch 

The small, keyless door to the dungeon, barely three feet high and two feet wide, was concealed in a workshop in part of the cellar by a shelf filled with cans of paint and other containers.

“Behind the shelf was a door made of reinforced concrete, secured electronically and running on steel rails,” said local police official Heinz Lenze.

“Only the suspect ( Fritzl) knew the code.”

Once inside astonished police found a labrynth of tiny rooms and tight, narrow stone-lined passageways, with uneven floors and a ceiling no higher than 5ft6ins, that was continually renovated and enlarged over the years as Fritzl’s “family” grew.

The retired electrical engineer, desperate to keep his evil plan secret, dug out much of the basement with his bare hands, making regular trips to local building suppliers for materials. Foam insulation was liberally applied as an effective means of sound-proofing.

“It was a prison which he installed with skill and energy,” said Mr Lenze.

The only source of light for Elisabeth and the children was a harsh striplight overhead.

Quite aside from the appalling mental damage, doctors are also concerned to discover what damage has been done to their eyesight after a prolonged period underground.

A television, video recorder and a large radio were their only contacts with the outside world – apart from the hatch through which Fritzl passed them food that was cooked on ‘small hot plates’ on an ancient cooker, and clothes.

Some toys, paper and glue were also found in the dungeon to provided some distraction for the young captives. Their handwork can clearly be seen in the photo of the bathroom where, in an effort to alleviate their unimaginable torment, various poignant children’s drawings adorn the wall.

Mr Polzer said: “The lives of the three children in the cellar is in no way comparable with the lives of their three siblings.

“Since the day they were born they have never seen the light of day. They never had any doctor to care for them when they were sick.

“They learned to speak from their mother in isolation. They were pale, and experienced having to be nearby during the ordeal their mother was put through.”

The case has prompted widespread disbelief in Austria over how such abuse could have been repeated – and why it went unnoticed for so long by the authorities.

“The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong,” the newspaper Der Standard said today.

Questions are being asked about how neighbours could have failed to notice what was happening.