Ayoi's

As a father who has two wonderful daughters and blessed with the twins, I just can’t comprehend on what Josef Fritzl has done to his daughter and even has the guts to let one of his daughter’s twins died (and the baby is his as well as he raped his daughter many times for 24 freaking years). Deep inside, somehow I do feel that the punishment is not appropriate for the destroyed and robbed lifetime and future of his daughter. But then when the time comes, he will face The Maker and I believe the justice will be fully served by Him. Below is the article that I’ve copied from SJS and team blog.

ST POELTEN (AUSTRIA): Josef Fritzl, the ‘monster dad’ who treated his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years, was yesterday found guilty of murder by neglect and sentenced to life imprisonment.  The 73-year-old pensioner, who was also convicted of rape, incest, forced imprisonment and coercion, remained composed and nodded his head to indicate he understood, when Judge Andrea Humer told him his sentence. He has waived his right to appeal.

Jurors delivered the unanimous guilty verdict and sentenced Fritzl to be placed in a mental institution. He will be transferred to a normal jail later if he is deemed cured. In Austria, prisoners jailed for life can be considered for conditional release after 15 years, though his lawyer noted that Fritzl’s age made that practically impossible.  The verdict came after he pleaded guilty to enslaving his daughter Elisabeth in a purpose-built cellar under his house, and to murder for the death of one of their babies in April 1996.

The prosecution said Fritzl had had 66 hours to seek medical care for infant Michael, who had breathing problems, but did nothing and let the boy die. ‘It was murder by neglect,’ chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser said at the end of the four-day trial. Fritzl kidnapped Elisabeth on Aug 29, 1984 when she was just 18, and incarcerated her below his home in the Austrian town of Amstetten for 24 years.

During that time, he raped her an estimated 3,000 times and fathered seven children. His wife, Rosemarie, 69, had no inkling of the abuses and believed Fritzl’s explanation of Elisabeth’s disappearance – that she had run off to join a sect. His crimes came to light only last April, when Elizabeth’s eldest child became seriously ill and he took her to hospital. Doctors alerted the police.

The court had heard how the sexually-obsessed building engineer locked up Elisabeth when she was 18 in a secret cellar beneath his home in the town of Amstetten in August 1984. For the next 24 years he would rape her up to 3,000 times and fathered seven children by her. Fritzl told his wife Rosemarie that Elisabeth had run away to join a cult.

Three incest children – Lisa, now 15, Monika, 14, and Alexander, 12 – were removed by Fritzl to be brought up with him and his wife: the so-called ‘upstairs children.’ Elisabeth endured in the dungeon with the ‘downstairs’ children – daughter Kerstin, now 20, Stefan, 18, and Felix, six, until Kerstin became dangerously ill last year, was taken to hospital and the cellar and its secrets were exposed.

Jurors were both repelled and spellbound as Elisabeth recounted how she spent the first five to nine months – she doesn’t know the exact time because she had no clock – chained to four poles with an iron girdle around her waist. He physically attacked her constantly. She told how he covered her mouth and prevented her from breathing. Although the prosecution says he did not speak to her for years, Elisabeth said he did, in fact, make threats such as: ‘If you do not do as I say, your treatment will get worse – and in any case you cannot escape out of the cellar.’ Finally the restraints were removed because they impeded Fritzl’s sexual assaults.

Elisabeth told how the lights would go off, he would come in, rape her, and leave. At first she resisted but then realised resistance would only end in more physical abuse. So she stopped resisting. The rapes averaged out to one every three days, but there were occasions – such as when he was on holiday in Thailand – when there were none, and some when he raped her more than once a day. She told of ‘constant beatings and kickings all over my body’.

Later, after 1989, he would come to the cellar armed with boxes of lurid pornographic videos which he would play while ordering Elisabeth to mimic the actors. She also spoke of sex toys being used upon her in violent sessions lasting many hours that left her with grave internal injuries. She received no medical care. When the children were born Fritzl would turn off the lights to rape her. The children were just feet away and had to sit and listen to his grunts and moans while Elisabeth stopped herself from crying out for fear he would either beat her or them.

Elisabeth said the physical brutality was only part of his rule – the ‘uncertainty’ of her situation, and that of her children, was the most paralysing, fear-inducing factor she had to live with. Then there were the threats. He told them he had rigged up a way in which gas could escape and kill them all if they tried to escape. He would rather kill everyone than have someone succeed in escaping and the truth to come out about their captivity in the cellar. ‘You have no chance of survival here without me,’ he would taunt her. If you want me to, I will close the door for good – then we will see just how you will manage without me.’ ‘Her mental state suffered particularly during her pregnancies, she had no medical help of any kind in the cellar. She feared every new pregnancy that came,’ says the prosecution.

Elisabeth told how the food often ran out and how, with no power for days on end, they were forced to eat cold food and wash in cold water. The cellar walls ran with so much condensation in summer they had to place towels along the bottom to stop a lake of water from spreading across the cellar. ‘We hated the summer and were always glad when it was over,’ she said. ‘It was like living in a sauna.’ She wore dresses that Fritzl picked out for her from shops far away from home. But perhaps most punishingly were the photos of the children Monika, Alexander and Lisa – the ‘upstairs family’ – that Fritzl paraded before her and his ‘downstairs family’. As a result of the living conditions in the cellar, Elisabeth and the children were often ill but had no medical care. He gave them only cough medicine or painkillers.

Elisabeth recalled how she first became pregnant, aged 20, in the summer of 1986 but she miscarried in the darkness in the 10th week of pregnancy. Approximately four months later she conceived again, but was entertaining thoughts of suicide at this point because of her maltreatment at Fritzl’s hands. She suffered from severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder.

‘Her soul was shattered,’ says the prosecution. In October 1987, Elisabeth became pregnant again. After putting ’severe pressure’ on Fritzl she was able to persuade him to buy a book on pregnancy two months before the birth of Kerstin. She was also given a dirty mattress and a filthy pair of scissors. Kerstin was born in the damp darkness in August 1988. Fritzl did not return to the cellar to see mother and daughter for ten days. Elisabeth’s son Stefan was born in February 1990, followed by Lisa in August 1992, Monika in February 1994, twins Alexander and Michael in April 1996 and Felix in December 2002.

She told how, after the birth of Lisa, because there was an increasing shortage of space in the cellar, Fritzl decided to remove some of the children. He had told his wife that Elisabeth had run away to join a cult. Now he made her write letters to them claiming the cult would not let her keep the children. He said he had found the children abandoned on the doorstep – Lisa in 1993, Monika in 1994 and Alexander in 1997. And he took them into the ‘upstairs family’. Elisabeth said that, shortly before the birth of Monika, Fritzl expanded the cellar, adding two rooms. He also installed a shower, ventilation system, oven and fridge. The cellar expanded from 18 square metres to 40 square metres.

She realised weeks before that she was expecting twins because of the excessive movement in her stomach and the excessive weight gain and told Fritzl. As Elisabeth went into labour, he was present in the cellar and he came to check on her every few hours during her labour. Fritzl was present at the birth because he had just finished having dinner with Kerstin and Stefan. Michael, the first to be born, was soon wheezing and struggling for breath in his first hours. He would not take the breast and his legs were getting increasingly hard and stiff. The day after the birth Fritzl brought down a new cot for the twin babies. She claims he could see that Michael’s situation was getting worse and he fully comprehended that his life was ‘clearly in danger’.

Instead of calling for emergency medical care for the newborn and ensuring help for the baby, Fritzl simply told Elisabeth: ‘What will be, will be.’ Michael died on May 1, 1996, from breathing difficulties. The next day Fritzl took his body upstairs while his other family were away and burned it in the solid fuel furnace. He scattered the ashes in the garden.

The final part of Elisabeth’s testimony concerned the illness that Kerstin, then 19, suffered in April 2008. Fritzl had always threatened that he would rather kill everyone in the cellar than let his secret out. But Elisabeth pleaded with him to get emergency medical care and related how she and son Stefan had to drag Kerstin out to Fritzl’s Mercedes so he could drive her to hospital. It was her first glimpse of the outside world in 24 years. For her son, it was his first experience of life overground.

He bundled them both back into the cellar while he took Kerstin to hospital, again using the lie that he had found her dumped on his doorstep. The hospital did not believe him and neither did the police who began to investigate. Doctors insisted on seeing Elisabeth because they needed information about Kerstin as she lay at death’s door. Elisabeth said Fritzl ordered her to tell doctors she had abandoned Kerstin because she could not cope with her.

But the game was up for Fritzl: officers took them into separate rooms at Amstetten police station. After she was given a guarantee that she would never have to see her father again, she chronicled her stolen life.

More on Josef from Google Search here.

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