Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in his home, raped her, and fathered seven children with her over a period of 24 years, came forward after one of the children fell gravely ill and had to be hospitalized. He will be tried for rape, the severest of his crimes under Austrian law.

Fritzl was born in 1935 and was a child during WWII. He lived in an apartment building which he owned and rented sections of to his extended family.
 
In his own section of the building, he built a deep basement with concrete walls and sound-proof doors, where he locked his daughter and the seven children she bore with him. Later, three of the children apparently “showed up” on his doorstep, adding to his wife’s, (their grandmother’s), belief that her daughter had run away years earlier. She apparently has been in denial the entire time. Police are examining her, and conducting tests on the basement to see if it was truly possible that no one, including the wife, the neighbors, social workers who repeatedly visited the home, and residents in a town of 23,000, heard the people who were locked below.
 
Fritzl’s victims, besides his daughter Elisabeth who is now in her 40s, includes a baby who died at birth, who he promptly incinerated, and six other children, ages 5 to 19. Elisabeth told authorities that Fritzl has been sexually abusing her since she was 11. She also told them that in 1984, he sedated her, handcuffed her, and locked her in the cellar. Three of Elisabeth’s children, those who “showed up” on his doorstep, were carefully attended to by their grandmother, Elisabeth’s mother, and allowed to go to school and participate in clubs. The other three, ages 5, 18, and 19, have never seen daylight.
Share this entry:
 These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Technorati
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Fark
  • Furl
  • Twitter