Police say Austrian man raped daughter, fathered 6 children

[sj5 4]

By VERONIKA OLEKSYN, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

[/color]VIENNA, Austria - A woman who went missing in 1984 was found by police over the weekend and told investigators that she had been held by her father in a cellar, where she was repeatedly raped and gave birth to at least six children, police said Sunday.

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qW9bEgVM8gAAiOz,E=84962395,Y=YAHOO,V=1.0";if(c.indexOf("adx_fc_8024")==0)eval©if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object();window.yzq_d['KmK.DtGDJHM-']='&U=13br7djrt%2fN%3dKmK.DtGDJHM-%2fC%3d642868.12637561.12962765.1442997%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d5335965';Authorities said that the father may have told acquaintances and relatives that his daughter had joined a cult and disappeared.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, told reporters that the father, identified as Josef F., had been taken into custody. Police said Josef and his wife had been raising three of their daughter's children. The other three grew up in the cellar.

"We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime," Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.

The case unfolded after a gravely ill teenager was taken around April 19 to a hospital in the town of Amstetten, where she was found unconscious in the building where her grandparents live, police said. Told that the sick 19-year-old's mother was missing, authorities publicly appealed for her to come forward.

Officers received a tip and picked up the mother near the hospital on Saturday, police said.

The mother, whom authorities identified as Elisabeth F., told officers that she had just been released after two decades of captivity at the hands of her father. She said that on Aug. 28, 1984 her father had sedated her, handcuffed her and locked her in a room in the cellar of the family's apartment building.

In an interview with AP Television News, Polzer said that Josef F. had given police a code to unlock a hidden door, revealing the area where Elisabeth and the children had been held.

It had "several" rooms, an uneven floor and a "very narrow" hallway, Polzer said, adding that the door was "very small," and that one had to bend one's head to get through.

"Everything is very, very narrow and the victim herself ... told us that this was being continually enlarged over the years," Polzer said.

The area also contained sanitary facilities and "small hot plates" for cooking, Polzer said.

On its Web site, ORF reported that the rooms were at most 5.6 feet high and that the area had a TV.

The area also included a "padded cell," Hans-Heinz Lenze, a senior Amstetten district official, said in remarks broadcast late Sunday.

Elisabeth said her father had been sexually abusing her since she was 11. According to the police statement, Elisabeth said that she and her children got food and clothing only from her father and her mother, Rosemarie, had not been involved.

Police said Elisabeth F. appeared "greatly disturbed" during questioning and 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 cared for.

Police said Josef, 73, and Rosemarie had raised three of Elisabeth's children in their apartment in a two-story building in Amstetten, a small town about 80 miles west of Vienna.

Josef and Rosemarie registered the children with authorities, saying that they had found them outside their home in 1993, 1994 and 1997, at least one with a note from Elisabeth saying she could not care for the child.

The three other children apparently remained in the cellar with Elisabeth, police said.

"Elisabeth F. taught them how to speak," Polzer was quoted as saying by the Austria Press Agency.

Police said the sick 19-year-old, Kerstin, had been found unconscious on April 19 in the apartment building, with a handwritten note purportedly signed by Elisabeth, asking that she be given care.

After Kerstin was hospitalized, police said, Josef F. freed Elisabeth and the two remaining children from the cellar and told his wife that their daughter and the children had come back to them.

The Austria Press Agency reported that, in addition to Kerstin, three of the children are boys and two are girls, the youngest of whom is 5.

All are in psychiatric care, along with Elisabeth and Rosemarie, police said. DNA tests are expected to determine whether Josef F. is the father.

Police cited Elisabeth as saying that she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later because it was not properly cared for, according to police, who said they are investigating.

Josef, the alleged abuser, then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the police statement said. It was not immediately clear if the twin who allegedly died was included in the police total of six children.

Sunday's developments are reminiscent of the case of Natascha Kampusch, which shocked Austrians less than two years ago. Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. She was held for the next 8 1/2 years by Wolfgang Priklopil, who largely confined her to a tiny underground dungeon in his home in a quiet Vienna suburb. Priklopil threw himself in front of a train just hours after Kampusch's dramatic escape on Aug. 23, 2006.

[SnowyTater 0]

I saw this on the news today, really really sad and weird, yeh...

Remember like...maybe a year, year and a half ago, there were a couple, maybe a few cases kind of like this o_O There was one girl found in Austria who'd been missing for years and years. Then there were two boys, right? I think they were in Austria or just eastern europe area too. And then there was some sick old guy in the States I think that kidnapped women and kept them in like a bunker in his yard while his wife died of cancer or something.

I thought it was really strange that most of the cases I remember are coming out of Austria or near-abouts though...I was wondering why. Is this some sort of weird Freudian cultural backlash reactionary thing about Austria or its history or what? It's just such a specific, peculiar crime.

[Niels Bohr 72]

It's one family. I'm glad it doesn't happen in my family.

[SnowyTater 0]

All those years, I would have found a way to kill him...especially when the kids came in. It seems like she knew it was wrong and is extremely repulsed and (of course) traumatized by her father. But I mean she was in that situation since birth, so you'd think that maybe she'd just be completely totally brainwashed to believe whatever he told her. But the news said that though she'd never seen the light of day, she would only agree to talk to them (first other people she'd ever seen I reckon) on the condition that she never ever had to see her father again and they kept him away from her and the kids. So she has a lot more independence and smarts than you might would expect in the situation, so...with that resistant mindframe I'd have found a way to kill the #######.

[wissooner 0]

apparently evil knows no bounds...

[StillThePrettiest 3]

...I'd have found a way to kill the #######.

but if that meant you'd be locked in the basement with his corpse...?

people who build underground bunkers and keep people imprisoned for decades are unlikely to make the elementary mistake of forgetting to lock the door behind them... though perhaps even then it would have been better; I think I would rather die than go through something like that for so long...

[Ms. Squirrel 11]

Fukcing sick.

[Anna C. 4]

He actually fathered 7 children and it is big terrible news all over Europe. They had no chance to escape as they were extremely malnurished and partially chained, no medical attention. The horrible pervert father installed a thick iron door with a numeric code that only he knew - so killing him wouldn't have helped as they didn't know the code to go outside - they would have been locked with no food and nobody knowing that they were there...

I strongly doubt that it is a particular Austrian thing to commit terrible sexual crimes... There are crazy people all over, I sadly must say that horrifying sexual crimes happen everywhere every day, all over Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. It is just a question of the media talking about it... How much stuff is going on in 3rd world countries and nobody knows as there is no media to talk about it??? Of course we will know more about crimes that happen in "our" world (EU, USA, etc - all the rich countries).

[Niels Bohr 72]

He actually fathered 7 children and it is big terrible news all over Europe. They had no chance to escape as they were extremely malnurished and partially chained, no medical attention. The horrible pervert father installed a thick iron door with a numeric code that only he knew - so killing him wouldn't have helped as they didn't know the code to go outside - they would have been locked with no food and nobody knowing that they were there...

I strongly doubt that it is a particular Austrian thing to commit terrible sexual crimes... There are crazy people all over, I sadly must say that horrifying sexual crimes happen everywhere every day, all over Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. It is just a question of the media talking about it... How much stuff is going on in 3rd world countries and nobody knows as there is no media to talk about it??? Of course we will know more about crimes that happen in "our" world (EU, USA, etc - all the rich countries).

There are more sex crimes in 3rd World Countries than the advanced countries. Most US civilians have no idea how much it goes on in those countries. In Cambodia, thousands or even millions of women are ill-treated daily sexually. A great many of them are underage, and have sex with hundreds of men daily.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

[churipu 4]

This made my skin crawl when I read it in the news earlier...it is one of the most horrific and sick things I have ever heard.

Some pics of where they were kept...

Edited April 28, 2008 by churipu

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

This made my skin crawl when I read it in the news earlier...it is one of the most horrific and sick things I have ever heard.

Some pics of where they were kept...

that shower sure is a tough one to get in and out of.

[Niels Bohr 72]

I've seen worse, but, I understand your perspective.

[churipu 4]

This made my skin crawl when I read it in the news earlier...it is one of the most horrific and sick things I have ever heard.

Some pics of where they were kept...

that shower sure is a tough one to get in and out of.

The article I read this morning said the room was only about 5.5 ft (1.70 mt)tall...

I've seen worse, but, I understand your perspective.

Unfortunately there's no limit to worse...so sadly I can easily believe you.

[Niels Bohr 72]

No pictures of the daughter?