I am going to say upfront that this story is not for the faint of heart. It is extremely horrific story of sexual abuse. It is in the Lincoln Journal Star page 3A at the bottom under the headline "How is it possible no one knew?"
In Amstetten, Austria, a retired electirican has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering seven children with her in a windowless cell sealed by an electronic keyless-entry system. The story continues… The suspect owned the gray stone apartment building, lived there with his family, and rented the other unites to relatives. His daughter was 18 when he imprisoned her and she is now 42. Police said one of the children died in infancy and was tossed into the furnace. The surviving children are three boys and three girls, the youngest is 5. The oldest is 19. Josef Fritzl age 73, managed to deceive everyone including his wife who was unaware of the existence of the children in the cellar. Officials said three of the secret children 19, 18, and 5 had never seen sunlight until they were freed a few days ago.
I also just found the link to the story on yahoo! news. If you would like, take a look. It is really awful.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/austria_captive_daughter;_ylt=Aiqf2627r4Vrn37HpUia9zJvaA8F
11 comments:
when i read this story i was so disgusted I can't even begin to imagine how that daughter felt to have been kidnapped and raped repeatedly by her own father for 24 year! When I first heard about this I read about it on CNN.com and they said that this father had begun sexually abusing his daughter since she was 11 years old. Her father was supposed to protect her, not take her life from her and cause her so much emotional and physical pain and tourtue.
I just read that one today too - how horrifying. It seems that someone must have known - I don't understand how a person can sneak off for undisclosed amounts of time on a daily basis without arousing any suspicion. Secondly, one would hope that a man who is capable of mentally doing this to other people, namely his own children, you would think he'd act weird enough around the general public to make them wonder what he was up to.
I think it is crazy that this man was able to fool his wife! You would think that the wife would catch on. This whole story just amazes me! I think the worst part is they say the perpetrator only faces up to 15 years in prison if charged! The daughter was imprisoned longer than that and plus she got raped as well!! I don't see how this is justice at all!
Wow! That's terrible. It just amazes me how no one knew anything was going on. I mean, it was 24 years, how could no one know anything? I can't believe that someone could do this to their own daughter. Horrifying. Those children hadn't seen the light of day until Saturday....what a sad sad story. The guy should be locked in the looney bin.
This is so sad! I think that this is an example of gender violence and sexual abuse because the man doing all of this kept his daughter and her daughters locked away. I found it interesting that there were only females locked up in the cellar and I am not sure if this man thought that his daughters were not as important as his sons and he decided to take part in this type of control in violence or if he is just seriously derranged and has no explanation. I feel horrible for the woman that was locked in the cellar especially because of the sexual abuse that she expereinced from her father of all people. I wonder what her childhood was like before he locked her in the cellar. It will be interesting to hear more as the story unfolds.
I was amazed when I read this story the other day, along wth the follow up stories. I also do not understand why the wife says she knew nothing or couldn't figure anything out. Three of his children with his daughter were raised by (the wife) her and her husband. The story he gave her was that the daughter was in a cult and just kept leaving the babies at their door with notes, whatever. When would you start questioning that after the second or after the third child was left. I think after the second one you might get a little suspicious, or at least tell the authorities, or something??? Just as disgusting is that when one of the children died, as an infant, he got rid of the body by burning it in a furnace. I think that there is much more to this story than we know and hopefully we will find out more answers. Like the food, how'd he get food to them on a regular basis without the wife knowing. How could they possibly be healthy livng in a cellar all that time?? Too many unanswered questions.
I heard this story on the radio one morning this week while i was driving to work, and I was naturally horrified. I think cases such as these can be attributed to the ways in which females in the media are presented, as we discussed in class.
As Dr. Lucas said, women in the media are often presented in young, child-like ways. Thus, how can we not expect the number of pedophiles and child molesters to rise. Though I'm not condoning the behavior by any means, it's as if the media tells men yes this is sexy ths is what you shoudl be attracted to, but the real world tells them no, you can't have this. I guess I believe the media and popular culture is partiall to blame for cases such as these, along with mental instabilty of the perpatrators.
Wow! This is such a sad and horrible story. How did this man manage to deceive his wife for 24 years! Didn't the mother wonder where their daughter went at the age of 18? This story makes me sick to the stomach. It is unbelievable that someone could do this to their own child. Then bringing incested children into the equation is unimaginable. I find it really sad that all these lives are ruined. The daughter has to be so mentally messed up as well as the children.
Oh my gosh...how aweful!!!
I don't understand how EVERYONE, including the wife had no idea what was going on. WOuldn't they be suspicious of where the daughter dissapeared to when she was 18?? I don't know how people in this day and age could get away with something like this for so long. It honestly makes me SICK!!
This is completely disturbing. I don't know how someone could do this to a family member, a loved one. What I really don't believe is that is wife had no idea this was happening. What is worse is that these children are out of incest and will be scarred for life, especially ones who were just introduced into the world and who just saw daylight. This sort of thing makes me feel lucky I live in this country because I do not think this would happen in the United States.
This is absolutely insane to me. I cannot believe it. The girl and those kids will never be normal again. This father inflicted so much torture on the family includeding his own wife. There are so many ways to relate this to gender and communication, but I don't know if they would be look stretches. All I know is this is so biazzar and sad I can't even try to put it with a theory of why it happened.
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