What does the scandal in Austria tell us?

It's hard to get your mind around the horrific story of Josef F (pictured) and what has happened to his daughter. Two stories in the Times today discuss how such a macabre situation could have unfolded in this Austrian community.

Roger Boyes reports from Vienna about the uncurious society there; Stefanie Marsh and Bojan Pancevski write about the several child abuse scandals in Austria and how attitudes among police and politicians have played into those situations, pointing out that "in two of these cases, neighbours admitted to reporters that they knew the perpetrators and victims of the crimes only by their surnames."

That seems to be backed up by some of the quotes in the Times news story this morning.

"Asked why Mrs F was not being investigated, Colonel Franz Polzer, a police spokesman, replied: "Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?"

In the same story: "Colonel Polzer, the police spokesman, described Mr F as 'extremely fit and in excellent physical condition' despite his age, as well as 'extraordinarily sexually potent'."

We don't know if Josef's wife knew anything about the situation unfolding literally under her feet. But the first quote assumes any wife or partner wouldn't be complicit in letting a man do terrible things, something clearly at odds with history, such as the deeds of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West.

And forgive me if the last quote is just a matter of cultural mistranslation, but to describe the sexually potency of a man who served time for rape, admits to holding his daughter for decades in a cell and has fathered seven children by her, sounds wildly inappropriate at best. It's obscene.

In the Guardian Dr Ian Stephen writes about the psychological effects the mother could be expected to experience. And one official in Austria said:

"As we were driving with one of the boys towards the hospital he told me he was very happy to be driven in a car. He had seen cars on TV and always wanted to have a ride in one. I could not detect any obvious mental or physical malfunctions in him or his sister."

If there is one small hope, it is that the children held in the cellar with their mother at least would have been able to create familial bonds with their mother and each other. While they'll never "get over it", at least they may be able to integrate back into the world in some way.

Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Man1KT8VkY

[Niki]

How old are you? 21, 24? Thats all your life? Your kindergarden school trip, remember the time when you were really exited about your high school promp party, that night of millenium new year's eve, your college fun days, your date and fine dining.. movies.. all this while she was there in that dungeon.. prisoned and raped and tears. All that time.

[Niki (perviously 'N')]

http://ihavelostitall.blogspot.com/

[J]

well if the security is dire then the banks would be better advised to reschedule the debt and let the family stay. Presumably if it won't sell readily, that is just as true if it's the bank trying to sell?

V interesting about healthcare, I agree. Austria is in the EU, though. So wouldn't they have any rights under common provision? Presumably they technically have the right to come to the UK with their E111 card and get treated here (OK I know they won't).

[supermother]

His lawyer is saying he's mad, not bad. It's always a difficult issue. My family are psychiatrists. This kind of thing (well not the exact facts) was bread and butter subject at home. Actually being committed for life to broadmoor can be worse than a more limited jail sentence. It's not always the best option.

It sounds like the therapy is going to cost the family a fortune that they don't have. In the UK I suspect the NHS would pay. It's interesting. They're going to have to write a book just to cover the medical fees. He has mortgages of almost 3 million euros and I think the banks are forclosing so it's likely they will lose their home and I doubt it's going to be readily sold.

[j]

CS
I dont think he is sane.

As for letting him off, I would hope a life sentence in a secure psychiatric ward would be trhe result of assessing him as dangerously mad.

[CS]

"he was a loony" - i think it's really dangerous to start thinking like this, he was a very clever man, capable of meticiously planning every detail of this horrendous torture - and should be tried in court as such... please lets not let him off on an insanity plea!!!

[supermother]

It could have happened anywhere. It may not happen in places where women earn money and are equal in their own homes. Austria can be pretty traditional. Germany has too many housewives and Switzerland only relatively recently gave women the vote.

The wife here tolerated her husband's iron fist over the children, his requirement they cease what they're doing when he enters a room etc. That may be because of his economic power over her. That is why charities which educate women are some of them most successful in Africa and elsewhere. If the mother had a job and out earned her husband I am not sure this tragedy would have happened. She would not have accepted his word. Like the McCanns she would have done all she could to find her missing adult daughter and when the girl ran away at 16 and was brought back would have hired her own psychologists to help tease out the real problems.
I don't blame the wife because she was in that relationship of her husband's power over her but I do blame a system which leads to women being powerless housewives.

[j]

I wonder if ther eason he did not take the earlier children upstairs is that his criminal conviction hadant lapsed then, so any application for adoption would have turned it up- he had to wait till the slate was clean?

Interesting that he is quoted as saying, once you have served your time then you are free from all taint. True if you have genuinely reformed, but in his case a dangerous thing to believe.

I dont think that it was in any way an "austrian" crime- he was a loony. But I think it is fair to ask if another country would have caught him a lot sooner.

[Jane2]

Re different cultures and customs (recent comments).
Julius Caesar (c. 50BC) noted that amongst the French, husbands had power of life and death over their "wives as well as their children".
On the other hand the Germans prized chastity. Tacitus (AD 97-98) noted that "German women live in a chastity that is impregnable..No-one in Germany finds vice amusing, or calls it 'up-to-date' to debauch and be debauched."
On the British, both writers commented that they seemed to be composed of a mixture of immigrants from the continent, as well as a few native species. Julius Caesar added that they covered themselves with blue paint and "shared their wives between groups of ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman co-habited first."
What we can learn from this is that the Germans appeared to have the highest standards of sexual conduct. And that nothing can be condoned or excused by referring to tribal customs etc.

[supermother]

Well I just hope the Texan courts take the right decisions. I canont believe it is right to remove so many chidlren without proof of abuse. It's like removing every child from a British council estate because 1 in 3 has sex under 16 and many get pregnant. I think it's rubbish they cannot match child to parent. Just get the parents in there, let them see their children - they have been promised regular contact but I don't think it's happening. In my culture here in NW London there are lots of people we know where cousins in Indian families etc live together - they call each other cousin brothers and sometimes the little children do not indeed distinguish between siblings. I don't see that as a reason to keep children away from parents. It's just a different way of growing up and arguably nicer for children than the sterile isolated nuclear family situation.

They could imposed regular inspection visits, vern virginity tests on girls under 16 or whatever. There was no need to remove so many children so forcibly.

[Delilah]

The FLDS (yes SM I should not have called them LDS) children have been removed partly because they cannot establish beyond reasonable doubt which child really belongs to which mother, and because the recent history of this community means that the mothers are considered likely to cooperate with attempts to make girls "disappear" beyond the reach of the law so that they can continue to be subject to underage polygamous marriage.

The other issue is that it is extremely hard to work out which child belongs to which mother, even with DNA testing, because the way polygamy is practised in this small community means that a large number of the marriges are consanguinious, to put it nicely. Not only is the pool of men considered eligible to marry relatively small, wives and children are often "reassigned" if their husband loses the support of the community elders, and getting records of all of this is, as you can imagine, tricky.

Yes, it is awful that these children are being seperated from their mothers but a brief google of "Warren Jeffs" may convince you that perhaps this is in everyone's best interests.

As regards Who Is The Most Villainous Country For Tearing Screaming Children From Their Mothers, wasn't there a rather unfortunate experience in Orkney involving "medical proof" of sexual abuse and satanic dancing around maypoles which subsequently turned out to be completely bogus?

Back to Austria, I don't really think it is about the nuclear family. The thing I really notice about Austria on my brief visits there is the way it is a meeting point of Eastern and Western European peoples - Russian, Slav, German, and more - with fresh immigrants from these countries coming in every generation. I suspect that like many immigration hot-spots (including the US) the society copes with this by combining a strong "common culture" which is not supposed to relate to any particular ethnic group with an intensely private home environment where ethnic heritage is allowed to be expressed freely. This avoids conflict in working and public situations, but can result in ethnic ghettos and residential isolation. I see this in the US, even in the big cities; I see it in Britain; but not in countries (such as Norway) that do not have large communities of first-generation immigrants proportional to the host population. I think this is to a more likely culprit for the lack of interest in Fritz' doings; not nuclear families. In fact, nuclear family structure probably forces first-generation immigrants to conform privately as well as publicly to the culture of the host society, and therefore to integrate more closely with their host country neighbours. It is the ones that choose to live in extended family groups that conform and integrate the least.

[supermother]

The nuclear family has a lot to answer for. When there are many relatives around or living with you and your parents and neighbours coming and going there is much less risk of children being hurt. The fortress is harder to set up. Mother at home all day with child in isolation is just about the worst way you can live in some senses. It's one reason I like the 3 student children being here a lot and living here so it's not just me and the younger children. You need different people, different input. One reason having nannies and au pairs is good too because there's a dilution of power.

But people like this man will exist all over the world in various forms, over sexed and sexually attracted to family members. I find the sexual attraction for a member of the family hard to understand as it's so contrary to how most of us feel and yet it's inherent in some men (and even women) and always has been. Separate from that is sexual attraction to children pre puberty and to children post puberty.

[blumentopferde]

"4. Why is he only being charged with rape and POSSIBLE murder? Why not kidnap, false imprisonment, mental torture, child abuse,incest?"

because there is no addition of penalty in austria. if one crime is done by doing a series of criminal offences, only the worst crime will be regarded. the only way the other criminal acts can be taken into account is by executing the highest possible penalty. so if you want to kill economically for example, kill many people at once, no matter how many people you murder you will only be charged with "murder". but still i doubt that he will ever walk in freedom again. there's a thing called preventive detention in austrian justice system . criminals that are deemed to be particularly dangerous can be kept under arrest even if they served their fine.

oh and something for those who think: he is evil because hitler was austrian too... get a brain! i really wonder how you can come to such a hillarous conclusion. genetically it is bullshit as austria is not a closed system and people originate from lots of different surrounding regions. i for example am half greek, my best friends grandmother is from romania, a very good friend of mine has a polish mother and a croatian father no one of us would say that he or she is not austrian, still we have totally different roots. genetically there is no typical "austrian". also not socially. austrians from vienna will probably not even understand austrians from the alpine region. there are typical habits and lifestyles of certain regions (which exceed austian borders) and social stratums (which you will find in every european society) but there is not THE typical austrian way of life.

BUT i think, i dont know, but i think, that there's a certain milieu that encourages this kind of familial criminal behaviour: i think it usually happens in the single family housing areas, at the outskirts of towns or in satellite towns around larger towns. areas, that are neither villages, nor cities. where no social interaction takes place, where everybody has his house and a fence around it and every family lives isolated while all their social interaction - provided they have work - takes place somewhere else at their workplace.
in such places there is no "community" or "neighbourhood", no centre, no meeting points. people coexist but don't interact. in such places bad things can happen for a long time, because no one even looks away, people don't even look at all. and i think that growing up and living in such a "fortress" forms the minds of people, making them yearn for control and isolation... and in the case of mr F a high fence , a surveillance cam and an alarm system weren't satisfying enough, he wanted to have total control over his whole family...

[Kim]

Sorry, Delilah, but I think you're barking up completely the wrong tree. It seems from an article in today's paper that the father frequently hit the daughter from an early age, and that he started planning the cellar where he was going to imprison her when she was 12 years old.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/03/austria.internationalcrime

She was entirely the innocent victim in all this, imprisoned against her will for 24 years. There was never any plan to join a cult.

As for why she didn't have children earlier, the question surely should be why did he have any children with her at all? He could have stopped it happening. It's yet another grotesque element of an already grotesque case.

[Judy Cornillie]

Children need to be nourished with love and discipline. Adults who, as children, were deprived of love and who were abused rather than fairly disciplined, don't grow up with the proper perspetive of how to treat others. Holding oneself accountable and having a conscience, develops through the love/discipline (in equal parts) relationship that occurs in healthy parent/child reltionships. Someone who has been denied this learning process grows up to become abusive and non-loving towards any vulnerable people in their own life who they can abuse the way they were abused. Joesph Fritzl was abused by his own mother. The only way Josph Fritzl can be redeemed is by teaching him what real love is. This can only be taught by loving him the way he was never loved. No one will probably ever do that to him because he makes everyone too sick to their stomach. In other words, without ever understanding what real love is, he will never be normal. Torturing him will only make him more angry and resntful. This man was never loved, so he does not know how to love.

[supermother]

I am sure the girl was held against her will. I am not so sure the FLDS Texans are living a life they do not choose but it's very hard with cults (or indeed our own society) to know what is choice and what is conditioning. Presumably I work because I was conditioned to believe men and women are equal and housewives are politically unacceptable and that dynamic morally wrong. The FLDS women (and let's not muddle them with LDS which does not approve of polygamy) are conditioned to accept they may share a husband and they appear to have sex at a young age like many girls on UK council estates whose babies we do not take away from them because we respect human rights in the UK in a way the Texans appear not to do. But then they're Americans , G Bay, extraordinary rendition etc, so what can you expect?

Interesting issues over what is right, what is objectively wrong and whether the state should step in for example in local Muslim homes (those of rural pakistani origin, not all) to mine and the local exclusive Brethren Group. In those communities girls are brought up to submit to men. We don't regard that as child abuse and we don't take the children away because I suppose we accept the freedom of parents to impose views on their children. We don't seem to take children and babies away where girls under 16 have sex in the UK either.

The FLDS case deserves its own thread but the wholesale removal of over 400 children when in individual cases you have not proven any abuse is very wrong.

[j]

There can be many reasons for not having a baby every year. I know quite a few people who had to wait a 2-3 years to conceive each time. With her appalling level of general health from bad food, no light and no exercise, she could well have been sub-fertile and/or had miscarriages. Who knows?

There is now speculation that at least one other man went down there. If so, that is worse. They cant both have been insane- the other man should have reported him, if that is true.

[Lazy Mummy]

Delilah - you raise some very interesting points; I hadn't thought about the fact that there were no children for 5 years. I do think though that anyone abused for so many years before being put into this situation (the dungeon) would have a harder time fighting back - and probably yes, there were threats to either side of the family. I, too, agree the grandmother must have known more than anyone's letting on, but agree with SM that it wouldn't help anyone to go down the road of punishing her as she was probably abused (at least mentally) & downtrodden too.

[Delilah]

Obviously she wasn't doing the shopping - but hasn't it occurred to anyone else to wonder why Fritz didn't buy them to use with her? Was he getting her pregnant on purpose? And if so, why, considering he clearly felt an obligation to feed and find beds for all of them? It doesn't normally take an 18-year-old five years to conceive; and there wasn't a baby every year, and from what we've been told of Fritz contraception seems a better explanation than abstinence. So why did the babies start arriving, and in such quantity? Did he find having babies prevented her from committing suicide? Did she get to the point where she looked forward to the next baby, not having much else to look forward to - maybe he left her alone and was nicer to her when she was pregnant - so actively avoided contraception herself? Or were they all the results of failed contraception? Was there a religious reason - it sounds like the secret children were brought up to religious belief?

As to the honor killings and forced marriage, I agree that of course the fundamentalist LDS sect in Texas are another example, albeit one that is being dealt with quite vigorously both within and without the Mormon community. My point in raising them is to point out (a)they rarely attract the media interest of this case, although often involve similar degrees of coercion and wasted lives, and (b) they involve well-known beliefs about appropriate family life which facilitate this sort of abuse. In the LDS it is the belief that a man whom the elders of the church designate as suitable to marry must then marry as many women as possible to ensure that they all go to heaven (apparently old maids don't); another belief that feeds this behaviour in LDS and other communities is the acceptance that obedience in marriage is the responsibility of the entire family, not just the girl in question (hence the 14-year-old marriage age, to ensure compliance and virginity). Now, a situation like the Austrian one, sustained for 25 years with the obvious complicity of at least some members of the above-ground family, must be centered on a shared belief. What was it? Was it really that Elisabeth was unstable and had joined a cult? Or was it that allowing her to leave would destroy the family? Were she and her children, in some hideous way, being held hostage to ensure the compliance of the above-ground members? Perhaps the above-ground members were equally being held hostage to ensure her compliance (eg. if you try to escape the disgrace will destroy your mother, brothers and sisters?) Was there a religious justification?

Over 25 years even the most appalling situation becomes mundane - haven't you read the Diary of Ann Frank? It is the mundaneness of the setup, the TV and the toy elephant on the loo cistern and the fact that Fritz spent quite a lot of time down there, presumably not just having sex, that interests me.

In the same story: "Colonel Polzer, the police spokesman, described Mr F as 'extremely fit and in excellent physical condition' despite his age, as well as 'extraordinarily sexually potent'."

Thanks for pointing that one out. I was beginning to wonder if I were the only one completely shocked by that one.

[j]

sorry, that last one was me, the machine lost my ID

Delilah we have answered your point on honour killings long ago and said that they are unIslamic and wrong. You appear to be fixated on them- why? because you dont share the Muslim faith of the people you associate with them? what price today's news then, that 27 of the children freed from the mormon cult in Texas were mothers already and two more were pregnant? Or doesnt Mormon abuse of children count as forced marriage?

Quite what that has to do with this case I am unclear but your persistent defence of incest and rape is very disturbing. This is the third time you have tried to argue that it was all perfectly understandable, she probably was fine and safe down there and she must have quite enjoyed it really.

[Lara]

I'm sorry but the police, the wife, the family and of course this disgusting man are all guilty - a normal person (ie his wife) would have found the cellar story suspicious for so many years - she must have had some kind of feelings about it - I think there is something VERY weird with this woman and she must have noticed her daughter was abused as a little girl ?

[kieransmum]

Delilah, are you really serious?
Why no condoms? Er, because it's not terribly easy to insist a rapist wears one?