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?

[Kim]

Delilah - I find your latest set of comments really weird. You seem to be suggesting that the daughter was complicit in her own imprisonment. Why? There is no evidence for that. The cellar was designed as a nuclear bunker - it was impossible to get out of.

"Why no condoms - did she actually want to get pregnant?" So when would she get these? On her weekly trip to the supermarket? Or did she think, "Oh, I know, I'll just pop out to the corner shop to get some condoms for the next time my dad rapes me?"

[supermother]

What would be the point in locking up the elderly grandmother? She is mother to the 3 outside children. her husband is obviously not going to be around to support her and the family. I can't understand any merit in looking into her case really. I think I would side with the Austrians on that. It is such a rare case and the greater harm done to the 3 outside children by locking the grandmother away would be too high and anyway her husband sounds pretty forceful so even if she did know I bet she didn't have much of a choice. They have tested the soundproofing and indeed you can hear nothing outside.

I wonder what makes some people sexually attracted to their own children or siblings and most of us not?

I hope the inside child in the coma pulls through.

[Delilah]

I'm afraid I've seen nothing yet reported that confirms that the only reason Elisabeth stayed in the dungeon was fear and intimidation. It seems incredible to me, but - how can you get a dungeon vacated for plumbing or extension without the cooperation of the inmate? How do you explain the things on TV to your children without also explaining that there is an outside that they don't have access to (did she tell them it was Heaven?) Why no condoms - did she actually want to get pregnant? Was she totally brainwashed (and if so, to what story) - was she mentally subnormal? Was the gassing mechanism not a threat, but a reassurance that she and her children wouldn't spend months starving to death if Fritz didn't turn up with the groceries? None of this is an excuse for Fritz' crimes, I just find these questions rather more interesting than endless shrieking about how evil he is and how evil Austrian society must be.

With the other seemingly acceptable forms of familial abuse that I keep going on about - HONOUR KILLINGS, FORCED MARRIAGE - the motivations are clear and reported. Not here.

[Delilah]

The only response I have for Helena is that the invention of long-term incarceration revolutionised the criminal system by replacing BDBAYD in the same way the invention of money revolutionised trade by replacing the ancient system of barter.

[j]

looks as if helena and hector are one and the same person....

[M]

I agree about Helena, although "she" seems to have stopped posting. I am proud of the penal system we have, although it has many serious flaws in its rehabilitation record, it is the reason many choose to live here. The idea of some squad trying to gauge when one punishment had equalled enough by the amount a sociopath could take is grotesque, especially when you realise that abusers have infinite capacity for self-pity above all other feelings.

I am intrigued now about the perception of cults in small town Austria, since their mention was enough to quell the curiosity of the police and the family. Which cult was this meant to be, where was it and why did no-one feel the need to investigate that a mother might not be able to keep three children safely there?

[Gipsy]

Yes I agree Sho. Even though I don't think Helena is real (and to be honest, I suspect that most of the folks here probably think the same thing) the discussion has been very interesting, and has certainly made me think out my position a bit more.

[CS]

And, BTW Helena, are you seriously suggesting that anyone, ANYONE, could recreate the situation that Elisabeth had to endure to punish her father???? The physical pain, maybe that would be possible, locking him away without daylight, etc... but to recreate the mental anguish that she must have suffered for the last 24 years and probably for many more years to come???? I don't think that is possible... to believe that you understand enough of what that poor family has had to go through that you can inflict the same punishment on their father seems just a little bit arrogant???

[CS]

Helana, I think there is a fundamental flaw to your BDBAYD policy. You argue that by making the punishment equal the crime that the criminal will then, and only then be able to understand the impact of his crime on others. Infact, in most horrific crimes such as this one the perpetrator is, as another poster described, a sociopath - meaning they have no conscience. In this case no punishment would be fitting enough to make them understand their crimes and runs the risk of only further exacerbating the warped logic they used in commiting their crime - that somehow it was deserved because of how society had treated them.

A far more fitting way to solve this problem is by incarceration, over many years whether that be in a prison or secure unit it doesn't matter, what does matter is that the environment facilitates intense rehabilitive working where only then there might be a hope that the criminal understands his crime.

[Sho]

Even if Helena isn't real - I have seen enough comment here and elsewhere to suggest that it is a topic well worth discussing. Every time.

[Gipsy]

Helena is not a real person - there may be a real person behind the persona, but just someone yanking our chain.

Would I know if someone was doing something like this in our street? Probably not. There are houses of all ages and sizes here. We're in a fifties house, next to us is a row of substantial Victorian houses, opposite are thirties and Edwardian houses, and there are georgian cottages further up the road. Quite a mix. The Victorian houses are very soundproofed - a neighbour had a baby, and frankly I wouldn't have known if I hadn't seen her outside with the baby as I'd never heard it cry (this was during the winter when the windows were shut). On the other hand, the fifties house on the other side of us isn't at all soundproof - we can hear everything that goes on in there (and I assume vice versa). I don't think that anything could ever be concealed there.

[Sho]

Another point about Helena's BDBAYD policy is how would you find someone to mete out the punishents. I did see mention of "in cases of rape an implement would have to be used".

Is that the kind of job you could advertise at the Job Centre? What if it was the only job offered to an unemployed person? Would their benefits be stopped if they turned it down?

I'm against this type of system for the same reason that I'm against fixed tarrifs for things like murder. Each crime is different - and in many cases there is no motive or reason for the criminal to carry out repeat crimes. Rehabilitation has to be part of the punishment or else we lose some of our own humanity.

On to the case in hand: there is, IMO, too much focus on the Austrian angle. We all tread a fine line between "my home is my castle" and living in some kind of "we pop in out of each other's houses all the time" idyllic village scenario.

In my village I don't know anyone's first name, and rarely talk to my neighbours. But it didn't stop me calling the police when the next but one neighbour was beaten up by her son. You don't actually have to be involved to keep an eye on vulnerable people.

[Héctor Rodolfo Mascherano]

El incesto tan brutal originado por el austríaco responsable de tan horrible delito debiera tener un castigo tan brutal como el daño que ha causado a esa pobre hija y a quienes serían sus nietos. Tal vez nunca más ver la luz del sol, tal cual lo digo.

[Lazy Mummy]

Helena - you said you'd like me to expand on why I think your ideas are crazy. I didn't expand on this last night when I posted my comments because it was late at night and KM had just done such a brilliant job articulating why rehabilitation is far better than your approach to justice that I knew I'd just be regurgitating her words poorly. Since then, many other people have commented and I'm not going to reiterate everything that's been said.

Suffice it to say that the comments by J, Gipsy, Kim, Mrs L, KM, SM et al sum up my approach towards justice too and all the reasons why they disagree with your approach are the reasons I disagree with it too.

I'm curious though. What do you do for a living and do you have children and what sort of education do you have (cultural, intellectual, religious, spiritual) that brings you to these opinions? No need to answer if you don't want to - but it does make me wonder.

[Niki (perviously 'N')]

I dont understand what kind of sick gang is this Austrian Police is.. all they seems to be inetersted in is proving that this guy acted alone and noone else knew about it.

"Colonel Polzer" as he likes to be called is too interested in shooing the media away from the campsite.. he emphasises that the investigation would continue for months again and again.. so that media guys looses interest in this and stop asking questions (which btw Austrians never did). All further questioning of Mr Fritzl has been delayed until next week for no reason. Many basic elements of the investigation have not even been started. Rosemarie, his wife, has yet to be questioned. Police asked her whether she knew what was going on, she said 'no' and that is it.. they found her denial credible. Police give bullshit emotional crappy statements like 'a mother cant let this happen to her daughter!!' and shit like that..

Conduct and handling of the case is miserable. Who tipped off the police if not an accomplice???!! Police says “Knowing about a crime is not the same as being an accomplice,” Oh IS IT??? Tipper is fucking rapist. “The rapist asked anonymity and we will respect that.” The police seem determined to rule out any possibility of someone being in league.

The door to the dungeon - which had received building permission as a nuclear fallout shelter - weighed 300kg (660lb) and could only have been hinged into position with the help of someone else. Mr Fritzl, went on several holidays, including at least one three-week stay in Thailand, leaving Elisabeth and her children in the cellar. Even if the small pantry was full of cans it is unlikely that there would have been enough food to feed them. And there are still questions about how the imprisoned relatives disposed of their rubbish. Police blocked questions on the issue and seemed even to deny knowledge of Mr Fritzl's holidays and absences. They say “If there is a home video from this Thailand trip then we would like the media to give it to us and we will then think about it.” The video, shown widely on television for past one week and they have not seen it and pretend to know nothing about it, yet again Austrians love to not care, to not know, to not ask, to not bother at all.

And I dont understand what kindda sick people live in Austria.. six sick individuals listed below:

One, Sabine Kirschbichler, lived for two years in the house and told the magazine that she frequently saw Mr Fritzl carrying heavy bags of shopping into the cellar after dark..

Two, Mr Fritzl's sister-in-law has revealed that the engineer often spent the whole night in the dungeon under the house. She said that he made daily visits to his cellar on the pretext that he had work to do and would tell other family members, not to disturb him. I mean common dont disturb him for freaking 24 YEARS??!! Ok you visit once a month.. dont disturb than.. than its okay.. but when you freaking visit the place DAILY FOR TWENTY FOUR YEARS and asks not to be disturbed dosent it get a tiny suspicious????!!!!

Three, Alfred Dubanovsky a lodger at the Austrian house says he saw another man go to the cellar where the abuse happened. He told the BBC the man was introduced as a plumber to him by fritz. Who was this plumber who visited the place when she was in? This Mr Dubanovsky assumed the basement was being used as a storeroom because a neighbour said to him Mr Fritzl often took food down to the cellar, which is four, the neighbour.

Five, he began to expand the underground dungeon from initially one room to three when she became pregnant, yet again NOONE noticed ANYTHING! Only in AUSTRIA!!

Six, fire inspectors routinely checked a heating boiler in the cellar in 1999. Nothing noticed!

Police and local Austrians have prolonged the agony of Elisabeth Fritzl, for almost a quarter of a century.

“Elisabeth ran away from that house as a girl, police searched for her, brought her back and delivered her back into the violent embrace of her father,” says Hedwig Woelfl, the director of a child protection centre in Austria. “Running away from home was a clear sign of unhappiness ... but nobody apparently showed any interest in the fate of this girl.” The chief executive of the region, Hans Heinz Lenze, showed reporters documents proving that his council's go-ahead for the adoption of three of Ms Fritzl's children was legal: no trace of a sex crime could be found. Social welfare teams visited the house 21 times, but never looked around. Yet the building had in the space of a decade registered one missing person and made the claim that three babies had been dumped on the doorstep. Yes one MISING for 24 years and yet babies popped up at doors and noone asked anything? Oh Asmetten!! What kindda place are you?

[supermother]

I have only read the first post and the last few. I am at the opposite end of the scale of Helena.

What does it tell us?

1. That the riskiest place for any of us is the home at the hands of our spouse (including all the physical abuse women dole out on their husbands too by the way) or parent or step parent or sibling.

2. That some people have a sexuality that means they are unable easily to operate within the norms of this society and that they need to be identifed young and that some research into the genetics of what makes some people as they are in some of these anti social ways is worth spending more money on.

3. That we can all be wise after the event but that often things amongst us we do not see.

4. I believe one or two of the children have health issues so it reinforces the risks of incestuous relationships and perhaps should make us ban even first cousin marriage in the UK. There are some areas with people in the UK from rural Pakistan where the population is 3% but the children born with disabilities from first cousin marriage make up 25%.

5. That most women can give birth safely at home. Random point I know and one of the twins did die.

The two older hidden children developed their own type of language and are hard to understand - thus education by TV may not really be so good even though they were exposed to speech there but again a lot of the stuff coming out may just be myth and un true.

I am afraid despite the tragedy what I hear about the Austrian rules and leaving people alone makes me wish we had that here in England.

[outraged]

Helena
Please take a break. You need to move on. I did.

[Katherine]

Helena is beginning to terrify me. I fear for her children.

[mumoftwo]

Helena, I actually doubt you have been the victim of a really horrible crime. If you had, you would know that most would never ever want to see the perpertrator again. To do to them what they did to you would just reduce you as a human being. All you have sometimes is the dignity of being better than them.

[Annamac]

Helena, I think your posts on this subject are becoming increasingly bonkers to the point where I just can't read them any more. Getting the victim to attack their attacker? Eh??? A special circle of hell indeed. Sheesh.

[Lisa]

What I think this does touch is, is also how strong people can be, and how much a mother can love her children. In one of the Times articles today it said that Elisabeth never told the three children that were with her that they were in fact prisoners. You can never know what you'd do in a similar situation, but I don't think I would have the strength to go through a 24 year ordeal that Elisabeth has gone through.
I really hope that she, and all her children, can go on to lead as peaceful and happy lives as possible, given the circumstances.

[Rachel]

what happens if the victim doesn't want to participate? Or the victim is dead? What about the mental suffering and damage? If someone is evil/empty enough to committ rape or all the evil crimes people have listed here, do you think that simply inflicting the physical pain is going to make them realise what they have done? And as for whether anal rape is more painful than vaginal rape, well, I do not think that that is necessarily the issue. I think perhaps the violation and degredation might be more of an issue than the pain per se.

[helena]

Matisse, Fraud - well, that's a good point. Sounds like they need yet MORE punishment, not just the 'equivalence' of retribution. Thank you for pointing it out.

Bulger killers - this, I think, raises THE most difficult moral issue I can think of. When children do evil. Here, there is, I would say, an absolute obligation on society to try and 'redeem' such children, because of the issue of at what age do we take responsibility for our actions, and to what degree? It's a terrifying moral minefield to negotiate. Because of that obligation, that the aim of 'redeeming' them, has to be met (to the best of our ability), so obviously the killers can't themselves be killed. And they can't be irreversibly physically damaged, as I expect pouring paint into their eyes would do to them. But I would advocate recreating for them as closely as possibly what they put their victim through, in terms of terror and pain, without harm or death. How ghoulish does that sound? Horrendously ghoulish, but how else can they be brought both to understand the hideousness of what they did, but to atone for it as well? (An even more morally complex issue, of course, is how much culpability their parents should bear, for having allowed them to be so perverted by evil, at such a young age. The ultimate bad parenting.)

Recreating the terror, the pain, and the powerlessness - I'm thinking now of the mob of females who attacked the WPC on the train for asking them to stop throwing popcorn (and she was a blackbelt too!)(they got her down on the floor, and kicked and stamped on her) - is an essential part of the punishment and the 'awareness' process. Take each of those girls, and replay the situation with her as the victim. Now You Will See What It Feels Like. Ditto for the Gary Newlove killers, and so on. I do sincerely believe they need to feel the terror and the pain and the powerlessness themselves. And they certainly deserve to.

"Say a man breaks into a woman's flat, beats and rapes her and leaves her for dead. How do you inflict this on him? surely he must be incarcerated so breaking into his house won't do any good. Who is going to beat him and then rape him? Why should anyone have to be asked to do that? And even if it could be done, is it really going to have the same affect on him as on the woman he did it to?"

Again, recreate the scenario in jail. I suppose in cases of rape you'd need to use an implement, and there would also be the issue of whether anal rape is more painful than vaginal rape.

As for murder - well, there is the death penalty. (The most vital issue there is being sure you have the right person executed.)

As for who should do it, why, the victim. Who else?

[Gipsy]

Helena, you can't only talk about the retribution or punishment and not talk about the rehabilitation.

You say that you want BDYAYD as a system of punishment. However, how do you implement that? If someone sets fire to a house, do you set fire to their house? But what if they don't have a house? Or there are other people living in that house who are blameless in their crime?

So then you say, OK set fire to their possessions. But if all they own are a few things from Ikea and a sound system from Argos, how does that equate if what they burned contained antique furniture and a Matisse painting? So then we might say, OK give them an equivalent punishment, something that is equal to the crime that they committed? Lets put a 'price' on that crime - which is what we do at the moment.

What if the crime is tax evasion? Or fraud? How do you fit that into your BDYAYD model?

I really do not understand how it works, or why you think it is a fair and impartial system.

Your constant reference to sharia law worries me too. Please please please research Sharia law more closely and look at how it is applied before you continue. I don't think you understand how it works in reality rather than just the theory.

[j]

Helena, I think what these posts show is that your matching the punishment to the crime might be OK for trivial crimes, but it is unacceptable for rape and murder.

Whatever happened to setting an example? if a child pulls hair or bites, I most certainly do not pull hair or bite back. Would you have laid James Bulger's killers down on that railway track and poured paint into their eyes and then smashed their heads in with a brick? and felt good about it? Would you go out and stab those teenagers who have been stabbing other teenagers in London recently?

As a society we have to decide what we are prepared to use as a means of controlling antisocial and crimial behaviour.

The issue has come up again as we have run out of prison space (some would probably tell me this is a good thing). Interesting that everyone is now stressing out about the bail hostels being housed nearby. Even though the people are innocent until prioved guilty, even though many are women on remand for trivial things, we are spooked. I'd be happier if they were stafed properly, of course, but I think many people have an instinctive repulsion from living next door to a criminal.

Is that fair?

Can it be partly that we dont understand criminal behaviour and therefore dont understand how we can protect ourselves and how far someone can be trusted who has committed a crime in the past?

Would you live next door to a bail hostel if it were properly run?

[Rachel]

"I do, quite genuinely, feel that the ONLY way for criminals to understand the effect of their crime on their victims is to suffer it themselves. I don't see how else they can be brought to to feel the impact of what they did. And, quite frankly, I also argue strongly that by suffering it they have been 'paid back' or 'retributed'. Their slate is then, finally, clean"

I just don't see how this could ever be achieved. Say a man breaks into a woman's flat, beats and rapes her and leaves her for dead. How do you inflict this on him? surely he must be incarcerated so breaking into his house won't do any good. Who is going to beat him and then rape him? Why should anyone have to be asked to do that? And even if it could be done, is it really going to have the same affect on him as on the woman he did it to?

I'm sorry, I think KM's reasoning is more appropriate for the kind of society I wish to live in. I think Helena's suggestions would bring about a very evil society.

[helena]

BDBAYD is entirely impartial - the criminal gets to decide their own punishment. No one else.

I find it utterly bizarre that you should think that taking a toy from a child so that it can feel what the other child felt, and understand how horrid it is, as vengeance. To me it's straightforward teaching. 'You wouldn't like it if I did it to you?'is what it is. It is a direct and immediate logical reaction to their own behaviour. Sitting on a naughty step has nothing to do with what they just did!

But then, as you can probably tell, the term 'vengeance' doesn't have any meaning for me. It's as meaningless to me as the theological term 'sin' which simply doesn't compute in my brain.

I think the word retribution is apt, though I haven't checked its meaning, but it has that sound of 'you did this and now this will be the consequence'. But retribution to me means 'equivalence' hence the BDBAYD policy.

The idea of making the deprivation of personal liberty (ie, imprisonment) the only or massively predominant way of imposing punishment, is very 'one size fits all' and I don't see why it should be the only one at all. Why? Why is that the only way you can punish people? (Remember, I am here talking ONLY about the punishment aspect, not the redemption/rehabilitation or public safety aspects).

It can be argued, and not just by me, that making a criminal face their victim and make reparations directly to them - eg, the yobs that vandalised someone's garden have to restore it with free labour etc - is far, far more effective in bringing them to understand what they have done (and is a lot more useful to the victim than just having the thug jailed - even if that does get them off the street!).

I do, quite genuinely, feel that the ONLY way for criminals to understand the effect of their crime on their victims is to suffer it themselves. I don't see how else they can be brought to to feel the impact of what they did. And, quite frankly, I also argue strongly that by suffering it they have been 'paid back' or 'retributed'. Their slate is then, finally, clean.

[Gipsy]

Helena, there is so much I disagree with in your post I don't know where to start.

No not all punishment is vengeance. We as a society have decided on a system of justice that is based on retribution - you commit a crime then you have to pay the penalty. That is not the same as vengeance.

If you want to take the child scenario that you mentioned - that is vengeance. Whereas getting that child to sit on the naughty step isn't.

We make criminals 'pay' for their crimes by using the value of personal freedom. The greater a crime, or the more crime you do, the more personal freedom you have taken away.

We do not make them pay for that crime by doing that crime to them. I find it repungent to think that under your scheme, a rapist should be punished by being raped themselves.

There are two ways to look at the Justice system. You can see it as being there to punish those who commit crimes, or you can see it as being there to stop criminals from committing crimes in the future. If you want a preventative system, which I do, then simply throwing prison sentences isn't enough. There has to be a rehabilitative element to it as well.

When it comes to sentencing you see only three options. What about the fourth option - an impartial punishment system without undue cruelty that is fairly, or as fairly as we can possibly make it, meted out in tariffs according to the crime committed?

[helena]

I do find it stange that the terms 'vengeance' and 'revenge' have been used to describe the Be Done by as You Did (BDBAYD) policy. So, in that case, if your child snatches a toy from another, and you remove one of their toys to show them what it feels like when someone snatches something for you, that's 'revenging' yourself on your child, right?

If you start using the terms 'revenge' and 'vengeance' then ANY form of punishment can be regarded as revenge or vengeance.

"If a system of justice lets a jury off the hook morally and removes the need to agonise, is that not a reason to be very suspicious of it? Some things we should never stop agonising about."

This is a much better objection. The BDBAYD option does require the initial moral decision to let BDBAYD determine sentencing, I would definitely concede that. But, once the BDBAYD policy is chosen, THEN you don't have to agonise/decide any more,because the convicted criminal's punishment is to have done to them what they did to their victims.

I don't buy the 'two wrongs don't make a right' argument on the point about if it's wrong for an individual to kill, then it's wrong for the state to kill, because in which case any punishment at all is a 'wrong' done to a criminal.

It seems to me that we have three options overal, when it comes to criminal sentencing (and this is separate from the issue of either redeeming them or keeping the public safe, which do also, of course, have to be addressed)

(1) BDBAYD - the crime determines the punishment (eye for an eye etc)
(2) Do absolutely nothing because all punishment is cruel (ie, if an individual put someone in prison, it would be a criminal act, so it's just as criminal for the state to do it) - and all punishment is 'vengeance'....
(3) Have a mismatch between the punishment and the crime - ie, the severity of the punishment does not equal the severity of the crime (in history, of course, the reverse was grossly true, with people being transported for stealing apples, etc etc)

LM - I do wish you WOULD put your objections down!

There is, of course, another possibility for determining punishment, letting the victim decide. I believe this can happen under Islam, is that right?

Plus the issue of reparations directly to the victim (Sason Weirgeld, if I remember - and spell! - correctly?)

[Annamac]

What does this case tell us? It tells us that the Austrian equivalent of the sex offenders' register is woefully inadequate. It tells us that there are always monsters in our midst - and that the really scary thing about monsters is that they often go about their daily business looking pretty normal.

As for it being a specifically Austrian thing: yeah, right. The Wests. Apparently both of them came from families where incest was the norm. And look at the recent Shannon Matthews case. Just what is going to come out there, I wonder, after the various trials. (Although I have to say that I doubt the British police would be treating Mrs Fritzl in the way that the Austrian police apparently are.)

Punishment for Frizl: if he is a sociopath, nothing will really make him take responsibility for what he has done, so society just has to lock him up and leave it at that. At least he can't do any more damage. If he isn't a sociopath, then spending the rest of his life (and 15 years will probably cover it, frankly) either in prison or a secure psychiatric unit being left to go over and over the consequences of his actions and feel the shame and guilt - well, it's a humane and just punishment. And I can't agree that a secure forensic unit would be a soft option.

I agree with J that the focus should be on trying to obtain some quality of life for his victims. At least they have the chance now of some kind of future. The Wests' victims didn't.

[Jennifer]

As mmmm pointed out, I don't think the scandal should simply reassure us. But I do think is poses important questions about Austria, Austrian police, the nature of parenting and child abuse crimes. It would be foolish to use it to create a referendum on Austrians in general. Certainly on this blog it's prompted very thoughtful discussion of rehabilitation versus punishment in a case so extreme.

[j]

I think we need to start from the premise that someone of this pathology is not going to be deterred by any criminal justice system. And equally almost nobody will be encouraged to copy him if he "only" gets 15 years.

I suspect that society would never be confortable about having him back, so he needs to be kept away from the potential to harm again.

In this case I also suspect that, although I quite agree in theory that nobody is beyond help, in this case for all practical purposes he will not recover into a normal man. So we have an almost pure case here of justice as punishment and as KM says we are being asked to focus on how, as a society, we wish to punish.

The problem with helena's approach is that it is revenge-based, and as there is no adequate revenge for what he has done, she has been led into an extraordinary escalation of violence in return. Thus do we get ethnic cleansing battles, sectarian violence and the Mafia for years- the code of honour and punishment going on forever.

Hellfire appeals to people of this retributative nature because it represents the chance of the little man to get his own back on the cruelty and wickness of the powerful, if he lacks the political power and wealth to do so in this life.

We cant cure him. We can never reproduce what he did. Maybe those who believe in hellfire can get some satisfaction from that eternal punishment, though I doubt KM does.

Me, I just want him locked away somewhere very cheap and boring for the rest of his life and for him to count for nothing much in future. All the resource, all the thought and all the energy of this case should be poured into suporting his victims.

[Mrs L]

What about the basic principle that the state should not be above the law? If it is illegal to murder/assault people, then the state shouldn't be doing it either. This is why justice based on an eye for an eye is fundamentally wrong. As a society, we have to continue to treat people humanely, even if they have not done so themselves.

[Kim]

I'd agree that a very important part of prison is rehabilitation - you would have to hope that attempts are made to get criminals to understand why what they've done is wrong and to help them lead a responsible life when they come out. It's not a task I'd envy, I have to say.

Obviously the other use of prison is that, while they're in there, criminals can't commit any more crimes. So even if there's no rehabilitation and it's not effective as a punishment, it does at least have that going for it.

In this particular case, the crime is so grotesque that I can't begin to guess at the psychology of the man who did it. I imagine there are accepted psychological explanations for why people commit incest, or rape, or incarceration - it's just that the combination of all of these things is like no case we've ever come across. There is nothing about it that any of us can relate to in any way. Even the fact that she bore seven children is in itself a horrific detail - you wonder why he didn't try to stop that happening.

[Gipsy]

Helena, I am not awake enough this morning to put coherently into words what I think on this matter. Crime and punishment are, I believe, the true mark of a society. That is, the rules we lay down as a society, which determine what is a crime and what isn't, and how we deal with those who transgress those rules.

I do not believe in having a punishment system based on vengeance. That belittles us as a society.

I believe that punishment should not be unduly cruel either, and the sort of punishment you propose would be.

I do not believe that any justice system, no matter how well thought out, is infallible. I cannot support a capital punishment system because I do not believe it is worth it if even one innocent person is put to death.

I also am quite well aware that psychiatric hospitals, particularly at the secure end, are not soft options.

[mmmm]

People seem to dwell on the 'opposite' options of punishment or rehabilitation, without considering what KM has touched upon in her very well-thought out post: part of the process of rehabilitation is for the criminal to face up and understand what they have done. I don't see why this should be seen as a soft option - if successful it is probably a far more traumatic process for some criminals than imprisonment etc. for some, even if it benefits them in the long term. It must also surely be a desirable outcome for the victim.

However I don't know where that leaves those who will simply never engage with the reality of what they have done.

I wasn't really sure what Jennifer Howze was saying/asking in her original blog. I'm a bit uneasy about the title - if we need to feel straight away that this 'tells' us something, maybe we are falling into the trap of not really looking for real answers but simply reassuing ourselves of our own little worlds, as described very well by Alice Miles.

Helen - if a system of justice lets a jury off the hook morally and removes the need to agonise, is that not a reason to be very suspicious of it? Some things we should never stop agonising about.

[Lazy Mummy]

Helena, I can't even begin to articulate how completely crazy I think your approach to criminal justice is, and I sincerely hope you don't work in the field!

KM - thank you for a brilliant, thoughtful articulation of what you believe about how we should treat criminals. You said everything I would have said, only in a far better way than I would have managed.

[helena]

The great thing about Be Done By As You Did as a justice policy is not only that it is intrincically fair - I mean, the guy can't complain that he's been treated badly, can he, if he only gets what he handed out to others? - but it also simplifies everything. You don't have to think, hmm, what's the best punishment for this crime, because the crime itself tells you what that punishment should be - ie, the crime done back to the criminal.

Additionally, it lets the jurists off the hook morally. We don't have to agonise about whther it's right or wrong to impose a certain punishment, the criminal themselves imposes their own morality (ie, lack of it) on themselves.

As I've said, for very many criminals there is practical hope of redemption/remorse in this life, once they have had Done to Them What They Did, but for some, so deep in evil as this man is, it's probably beyond human ability to reclaim him for humanity, even when he's had the justice he deserves (ie, what he did to his victims). And, as I've said, his natural response, were he to be redeemed, would be to want his own punishment.

[helena]

Outraged - what do you think should be done with him, and why?

[Delilah]

Helena, you need to read up on Hammurabi. It's already been tried and no doubt in other fora we will write about how appalling his eye-gouging, hand-chopping and beheading justice system still is.

Although I've always thought there was a certain logic to the practice of stoning - it only works if enough people throw enough stones to finish off the victim, which spreads responsibility for the murder across the community that ordered it. They also have to witness it - no discreet termination in a back room.

Also for the Chinese emperor who wrote that particular crimes and punishments should never be firmly linked, because then people would make cost-benefit decisions about committing the crimes. For instance, if there was the chance that you might get your eyes gouged out for parking in the wrong place, you wouldn't take the risk.

Ah, the law. Doncha love it.

[outraged]

KM
You really are a force for good in society. Don't ever give up being rational and standing up for that which you believe.
I tell you this because my first response to Helena's question, "what punishment should be meted out to this creature?" was visceral.
You made me think more deeply about it, and I refrained from posting what I first thought, which would have left me feeling ashamed and exposed.

[helena]

I think I would make another point in respect of this crime. I read that they are talking of imprisoning him for l5 years, which is compable with many other crimes. And yet his was a crime of sustained sadism - sustained over a lifetime. The sheer horror of what he did argues for a far, far more severe punishment because of that sustained sadism.

Maybe it says something about our society (and my morality!), that I can think of any crime as 'ordinary' but this one stuns one into disbelief that a human being could this, and for so, so long. It is the horror of it it, just as, on far, far greater scale (but NOT I would argue, in individual culpability) as the discovery of the concentration camps were. It is the feeling of this crime being 'beyond humanity' - unimaginable to everyone except those few, monstrous individuals such as this one.

In that sense, becasue the crime is exceptional, so the punishment must be as well. He should NOT be treated as an ordinary criminal, any more than a child murderer can be treated as an ordinary murderer (and yes, that does beg the question of what an ordinary murderer is.)

Nor, in this instance, can there be any question that punishment should act as a general deterrent. I doubt the vast, vast majority of criminals in jail would do what this man has done. (And what depresses me is that when he is sent for what will prove to be a trivial jail sentence, if not the soft opt-out of psychiatric hospital, he will be kept in safe isolation, for otherwise I am sure the wrath of the other prisoners would impose his true fitting punishment on him.)

[helena]

KM - yes, best to leave God out, I quite agree, as we still have to devise social policy on the default assumption that no God exists. (But that if they do, then we have to justify our decisions to that deity).

I do believe people should get the treatment they hand out. This is the Mrs Be Done By As You Did.

Do I want to 'save' the person who committed evil, for example, by showing them what humane behaviour is - ie, by showing them the mercy they did not show their victims? If I carried that to its logical conclusion, I would not punish them at all, because I would be showing the ultimate mercy of not punishing them. So I wouldn't put anyone in prison, exact no retribution, nothing.

I might imprison them to keep the public safe, but in that case, they'd have to be in prison for ever - how could one ever say that someone had been 'cured'? Could we be sure? Child sex offenders, for example, seem to be in an incurable condition - they are sexualised irrevocably towards children, just as a heterosexual person is irrevocably sexualised towards someone of the opposite sex, and can therefore never be 'cured' of that dispositon. (I'm not sure I believe that about child sex offenders by the way, since I think it is a pathology, an aberration, not natural, and has been caused by severe pyschological distortion from their original norm they were born with)(This is because I think the fundamental driver for wanting sex with children is power, not sex, and it is a pathologial drive for power that causes child sex abuse.)

So I think my logic is - well, if the purpose of justice is to show the criminal the meaning of humanity, then show them mercy, and don't punish them at all.

But I don't think that is the immediate purpose of justice - which is to match the punishment to the crime, so that the crime can be expatiated. Again, if they understood the evil they have done, they will agree with their own punishment, as I've said before. If they don't agree, they need it to expatiate their crime, whether or not they are ever 'cured' and restored to humanity by recognising the evil they have done. And, by my argument, once they HAVE been restored to humanity -eg, perhaps by your method of showing them mercy - then, again, as I argue, they themselves will volunteer to endure what they put their own victims through.

Would I like to see this evil man redeemed in this life? Yes. But not at the price of avoiding imposing justice upon him.

Whether he repents, and volunteers for his own matching punishment, or whether he doesn't, he still gets the same treatment as he handed out to his victims.

[Kieransmum]

BTW, Helena, I should add that this debate is very helpful in making me clarify what I do think, so thank you for asking!

[Kieransmum]

I am going to respond on the issue of social policy, Helena, rather than on a metaphysical argument, because I think that is more appropriate to the general terms of debate on this thread.

If you want me to outline what I think God's justice is, I will gladly do so in a separate response that those who are not interested in theology can gloss over, but at the moment I will talk about what I think human justice is or should be because I do not want to ghettoise this debate or my contribution.

Why do I disagree with you?

Because I think the purpose of jail is to punish offenders and reduce the likelihood of them offending again. That means a prison system that is designed with some semblance of humanity to model social values as a whole, in order that those who have offended are 'modelled' examples of fair behaviour.
That means treating prisoners with humanity, despite the fact that some of them have behaved without humanity, NOT in order to let them off their crimes, but
1) because if you believe it is wrong to treat people cruelly, then that logic has to apply to all people, even ones who have committed terrible crimes
2) if a criminal is shown fairness and humanity then it is easier I think for that criminal to begin to comprehend/remember what humanity is, and thus begin the journey of coming to understand what they have done wrong in hurting others.

I see the prison's system highest aim as helping bring guilty prisoners to a sense of remorse for their crime and desire for personal change: a re-acceptance of society's humane values. That cannot happen, IMHO, in a place where society's humane values are absent. You may disagree, but I would suggest that whilst hurt-the-criminal sentiments are very emotionally satisfying, change-the-criminal policies tend to be the ones that have a more far reaching social impact.

I would like to see less crime and therefore I would like to see a more change-driven, rehabilitation-focused edge to prison management.

Obviously you can come back at me with the argument that in some cases the crimes are so heinous/the criminal so irrecoverably evil that there is no point trying to 'change' them, you might as well just punish as severely as possible. That would be a fair argument, were it not the case that to treat some prisoners well and humanely whilst others are treated badly would be a violation of the principle of fairness and compassion, the very principle which a justice system should be trying to uphold.

My reasons for thinking that a punitive system of justice is unhelpful have nothing to do with religious belief and everything to do with wishing to reduce crime on the ground.

[helena]

KM - not suprisingly, I disagree with you. Why do you disagree with me, I wonder? What do you think justice is? What would you do to this man, if you were in charge of his fate now (and this is predicated obviously on the premise that he did indeed do exactly what we are reading about, for whatever reason)(and do you think the reason, whatever it is, relevant, eg, if he is insane, would that change what you did with him?)

Yes, God may exist, and if so, great, then we'll all get what's coming to us (heaven or hell) - but we can hardly just base social policy on the hope that after death God will hand out the appropriate brickbats or bouquets (because supposing God doesn't exist, and people like this man, Hitler,etc got away with it). Our difficulty as humans is twofold - firstly to establish the truth (ie are we bringing the right person to trial?)(not presumably in this instance, but in general). Secondly, to see into the hearts of men, make windows into their souls.

The first is hard enough, except perhaps in such cut and dried cases as this (and again, taking it as such). The second is very, very hard, and we know from practice that there can be horrific crimes that are, nevertheless, justified - such as someone killing their abuser (in some circumstances). After all, if this woman had managed to kill her father, would anyone DREAM of putting her on trial for murder?

I am really curious to know what people think is a just sentence for this man?

[M]

I agree Helena and Mo2, just looking at the cellar makes me feel claustrophobic. I think it is also worth saying that people have started to care about this family too. There are messages everywhere to Kersten, the eldest girl, saying people are praying for her, that they hope she makes it and people hope they can adjust and come to terms with the world outside. The BBC uses their names and soft speech and KM, I think you're right about your comparison; I feel for them the way people must have felt about survivors of holocaust camps, I want in some way to make up for the inhumanity, to think of them again as people.
It has preoccupied me and I have thought about that, but it is the isolation, incarceration and degradation of young life that upsets me most.

[Kieransmum]

Well, thank goodness you're not in charge of prison policy, Helena.

[helena]

MOT - I am with you completely in what you write.

I think the sex and the incest are NOT the source of the horror. They are added horror, but they are not the cause of the horror. No one would be nearly as horrified by this vile, vile man if he'd simply had sex with his adult daughter for 24 years and fathered all those children on her. The horror is the incarceration, not the sex and the incest.

If I had to choose between being incarcerated for 24 years like that, but without the sex/beating/children etc, or be a continuing victim of incestual sex abuse but 'in the fresh air' I know which I'd choose. I don't think any person on earth would choose the former. That is not to belittle the horrors of family sexual abuse, and the mental prison at the very least the abuser keeps his victim in, but in comparison with the incarceration it is far, far less a torment. Shoot me down if you want for saying this, but I would stand by it.

The man is monstrous, evil, and no, I disagree J, l5 years is not enough - he needs to be incarcerated, as his victims were, for just as long as each of them were, ie, cumulatively. Since his life span is going to be shorter, that needs to be compensated for by increasing the severity and pain of his incarcerateion, by whatever 'makes up the difference' (eg, starving him, perhaps, beating him more severely than he beat his victims, whatever meets the 'eye for an eye'. THAT is justice - because justice is having done to you, what you did to your victim. Anything else is getting away with it.)

[Kieransmum]

Also, I think it is worth pointing out the statistic that 60% of sex offenders in jail were themselves sexually abused as kids.
Which is high, I know, but it still leaves 40% who weren't.

[mumoftwo]

Delilah, I disagree with you. I don't think that it is the incest which is what has attracted so much attention to this case (there was a TV programme all about incest the other week which didn't attract nearly so much attention), it is the treatment of other people, indeed, your own children as some type of sub-humans who simply have no right to exist in the outside world. To imprison them, deprive them of light for the whole of their natural lives, this is beyond most cases of incest, really it is. I do also find many other things you mention horrifying, I wonder why you think I don't.

[Kieransmum]

Have thought hard about Delilah's perspective, and I'm a wishy-washy prison-chaplaincy-volunteer, and I still think it's nonsense.

Evil exists. Hitler was evil. We could talk about the influences that helped make him that way, but ultimately he wasn't a victim in the same way as the Jews.

This is a similar level of torture and depravity. Only the scale is different.

I'm sure incest is a complex subject but this isn't just an incest story.

[Delilah]

Would this be quite so newsworthy if he had locked his entire family in a basement and NOT had sex with any of them? Of course not. Nor is it when someone slashes his cousin's face for going on a date, or murders a virgin who refuses to marry aganist her will. Nor was it when a woman locked her four children in a tiny chicken house for eight hours a day, every day, so she could go to a job that didn't cover childcare. This story is selling papers because it is a sex show for the public. That's the real obscenity.

[M]

Delilah, Thanks I have read the book and many others, including Maya Angelou. My analysis also comes from having many conversations with women who were victims of abuse at a women's refuge, dealing with young offenders over many years and also I have a relative who experienced it and have seen first hand how it wrecks lives. My reference to The Color Purple film came from the recent reminder while watching with my daughter, who has also read the book and I thought it made good shorthand here for the point I made. You are learned and so are many others here, which is a good thing, no?

[Delilah]

Incest is a complicated subject, because the abuse is usually integral to the way family members express love and dependency with each other. Every family has its own "norms" which may not be the same as "normal society", some of which are innocuous and some of which are not. Think of sexist attitudes that are kept under wraps at work but unquestioned at home, racist or hate jokes that are given airtime behind closed doors if not on the street, alcoholism, - and, in some families, add incest. (Try READING "The Color Purple" instead of relying on a Hollywood movie, it describes this very well. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" does too).

I found Michael's post very interesting - the overwhelming obligation not to embarrass your parents, to keep the family's secrets. That makes it hard for the next generation to break out of a toxic family "norm". There's a bit too much of the twitching net curtain about some of the comments on this post. Perhaps our louche, disrespectful, no-curtains-let-it-all-hang-out culture has some benefits after all.

[j]

true helena but as he is 73 I dont think we need worry about what he will do next...

[helena]

Quite incomprehensibly, according to the BBC News, the man only faces l5 years in jail. Whatever happened to justice? Certainly isn't in Austria.

Shameful, shameful, shameful.

[j]

Elizabeth was abused from the age of 11, then locked downstairs from the age of 18. Her first child (that we know of, at any rate) was born five years later.

Doesnt sound much like a sudden crisis to me.

[M]

Yes, I have been thinking about Delilah's post, too. It may be true that he was a victim of something, at some time, but he was light years away from that many years ago. His methodical plans for the nuclear shelter, carried out years in advance show that and, as J says, the children, the whole thing, really. I can see that it is necessary for us all to condemn this man, a collective societal need to distance ourselves from something this hideous, so we can believe our world represents something better and sleep at night. The needs of these poor hunched, tooth-decayed and deprived "troglodytes", as they are referred to in the paper today, must come first, or nothing makes sense.
The lodger has said today, he saw wheelbarrows of things being delivered in darkness, heard cries and knocking and that the man spent all day down there. it makes me shudder and brings me back to my original point that most mothers know, even if they don't allow themselves to "know". Which makes the police description of the idealised mother image outdated, ditto the concept of criminal records with shelf lives. We may never know, as they now say there is nothing more to investigate, as they did with Kampusch.

[j]

Going back to Delilah's post- I really have tried to understand your POV as I am generally in favour of compassion.

But where you say "He could kill her - simple and permanent, but obviously he found that option repugnant. ..locking her in the basement where she was safe and cared for until the "problem" subsided might have seemed the least bad option. If he were completely evil, selfish or practical he would just have killed her...the person controlling Elisabeth's imprisonment was not willing to allow a much-loved family member die in order to protect the status quo."

That might all be true, of, say, choosing the wrong school for someone. But the point you seem to be ignoring is that this truly was a fate worse than death. Nobody could fool themselves otherwise. And there is no need to conceive seven children either. One, by mistake, perhaps. Not seven.

Cant see it, sorry. If they find him insane that might be fine as long as it implies jail with no release date. Still I guess 15 years ought to be enough aged 73, providing they dont give him parole.

[j]

Give-away point in some reporting- apparently the three children who were given up for fostering were chosen because they cried a lot at night and he was afraid they would be heard.

not that sound-proof, then...

[CS]

I have to agree with mum of two... I can not believe that the wife did not ever see or hear anything strange.. like you, if my husband disappeared to the garden shed (we don't have an underground bunker) for hours on end with huge amounts of food and clothing disappearing in there with him I would have asked questions, but then our relationship is an equal one built on trust and respect. I think the fact that she didn't ask such questions must show, as others have suggested, that the abuse stretched much further than that cellar, how terrified a wife must be never to question her husband

[j]

Samantha I am not sure I can agree that this is an Austrian thing, nor that entire nations have characters which are unchanging.

Having been to Uni in Germany I know it was very hard for my friends to grow up as young Germans, feeling morally responsible for something that happened before they were even conceived.

It's a dangerous way to start thinking: next thing we, say, let's give entire nations second-class rights, as they are unworthy to be trusted.

This man is sadly not unique but I dont think he is typically Austrian.

[Michael]

Just a brief comment from someone who was born and raised in a place which is not too far from where these terrifying things happened:

I have racked my brains over the last days whether claims raised by international media etc. blaming Austrian society for those crimes carry in fact any substance. My conclusion is: Austrian society has definitely not created more "human beasts" than any other comparable society, regardless that the recent happenings would suggest so.

However, Austrian Society might - to a certain extent - be blamed for the fact that the crime had not been discovered earlier. Obviously, the local authorities over the past decades have not put sufficient effort in retracing the validity of the stories presented to them by the (let me call him so) "alleged criminal". Same applies to neighbours etc who "never could have imagined..." Why: Because he was typically middle-size-classed, had a decent job, always friendly, generally kept a low profile etc. In Austria (in particular outside larger urban areas) someone with a profile such as the alleged criminal would never arouse suspicion in particular vis-a-vis authorities or any people in his environment . On the other hand, if you are in whatever sense not mainstream (ie outgoing, communicative, open) you might more likely arouse suspicion. What counts in Austria is (i) social status (education, academic title etc) and (ii) simply being mainstream. If you comply, everyone will kiss your butt. If not, you are generally not accepted. At least this is the scenario in which my parents and myself (I am 33) were brought up in a small town at the outskirts of Vienna. As a kid there is basically one rule you have to comply with: "Avoid all possible embarassments. Otherwise we - as your parents - will be blamed for this..." In any case, my impression is that over the past 15 years or so things have considerably changed. People are more open, more communicative, do not only care for their own business, enhanced interest in social contacts, less xenophobia.

[Lisa]

Thank goodness he didn't end up in government.

[mumoftwo]

Someone else made a very practical point too; the father would have had to have bought and carried food every day to the apartment, plus clothes and other things, plus he would have been absent for periods but not gone anywhere in his car. If my husband walked up the drive with heavy shopping bags, disappeared for 20 min, then reappeared without any bags, I would think that was odd. I would probably ask him where his shopping was. I would also have a nose in the cellar which he forbid anyone to enter just to see what was down there at least once in 24 years. To never have heard a cry at night from six babies within the block, knowing no-one lived in it except the odd tenant, well, either the mother is deaf, or she just didn't want to hear.

As for whether this father is more evil than any other given evil person, I'm not the person to judge that. On a scale, incestuous abusers are pretty low anyway. But very very few take their own child prisoner at 18, rape them for years, lead them to live like an animal in a very small confined space, make them bear children without medical help and then make the children watch the continuing abuse... This father didn't see this daughter as another human with any degree of rights, he saw her as his subject, to be used as he saw fit. I'm sure it was only the difficulty of disposing of a whole large dead body of the daughter as opposed to the small one of a dead baby which made him let the daughter out and I'm sure he threatened the daughter and her children with death if they told anyone once she was at the hospital. He probably hoped they would get away with it and he could return her to her prison. To a lesser extent, I have seen abusive fathers terrorise families, and they are always, without doubt, entirely selfish in fulfilling their needs and find it difficult to understand that others have them, never motivated by misguided humanity.

[Samantha]

Hitler was Austrian, and in my opinion and generally speaking, a nation never really changes its character (ie. France has always been regarded as a more nationalistic land in the past and still is, alcohol consumption was a problem in Britain in the Middle Ages and it still is, the Germans were always seen as very organised and they still are ....).

As a mum myself, I fail to believe how any mother could blindly accept an explanation that her daughter ran off to a sect and in all those years could not be bothered to search for her or contact the authorities to launch a search for her. Also how could any mother NOT question why the daughter would be in contact with the father and not herself when she left her 3 babies on the doorstep! Most puzzling. I agree with N. They all should be punished. There is NO way Elisa´s mum could not have known or not suspected that something was wrong. She was just too cowardly, like most of that society was back in the 1930s, seeing wrong and turning away! What a tragedy that in 21st century nothing´s changed over in Austria............

[helena]

I must say I am relieved that I am not the only one to find that ANY attempt to defend or exonerate the father in any way whatsoever, and to try and blame the media for stirring things up, quite, quite shocking.

I don't think we can make monsters go away, by trying to argue they aren't monsters. We have to face the evil that men do (and women, yes, sometimes by collusion, like the evil accomplices of other monsters, sometimes by the cowardly silence that mothers often have towards their abused daughters, because they don't want to face up to what is going on).

Something made this man a monster, bereft of pity and compassion. Saying he is a victim is unacceptable. We live in a society where moral values are clearly held - no one can claim they 'didn't realise' that raping and imprisoning and terrorising other people is wrong.

I doubt that, this side of the grave, anything can redeem him, make him understand the depths of his own evil. If that unlikely even should happen, then he will voluntarily wish to expatiate his evil, by subjecting himself to a fitting punishment (which has to be at the very least a similar torment to what he put his own victims through). It's one of the things that always gave the lie to Myra Hindley's prating that she had become a Catholic now, and deserved to be released. If she had truly become a Catholic, she would know that she was simply serving a minute fragment of her time in purgatory, where she now is, expatiating, to the very last iota of suffering of her victims, what they themselves suffered, and their families too.

Christianity gives redemption to all - after expatiation. We can only wash off the blood of others on our hands by our own blood.

[Cece]

This man repeatedly beat and raped his daughter, the basement had a padded room with a rubber floor which is hard to think about, so his arrival must have filled the children with terror, yet at the same time he told the children that if anything happened to him then they would be left to die. Can anyone imagine anything more evil or more calculated to damage you mentally?
This man is no more a victim than that poor nice Dr Mengele.

[M]

Doesn't the sex tourism aspect tell us something? The pictures of the elderly, bloated figure show us what those Thai girls are confronted with every day, in similar conditions, some of them, as their youth is stolen from them.

[j]

I am sceptical about the claim that he suddenly took pity on his daughter. I think it is more likely that we are being told this to protect the grandmother, who may have known more than she says but finally refused to allow K to die.

Delilah - I cant agree they are all victims, I dont buy the idea of the poor innocent incestuous daddy getting carried away and suddenly having to lock four people underground for 25 years to protect his pension. What next- Elizabeth asked for it by growing up too pretty?

Your idea that she was safe and cared for is astonishing. She was permanently crippled mentally and so were her elder children. Their lives have been ruined.

Of course it would have been better to give himself up long before he even had six incestuous children to care for. They would have been offered what they are being offered now- new lives and state aid.

[doggerel]

Delilah, is this the same person? Your most recent, moderate comment is very different from your initial emotional reaction. In fact, you nearly had me feeling sorry for the guy for a moment there.
However it needs to be remembered that a big body is very difficult to dispose of even with a handy furnace in the basement. Which may be why he didn't kill Kersten.
Further questions need to be answered:
1. Has Kersten been examined for signs of sexual abuse?
2. Why was she taken to hospital? Had he beaten her senseless, was she pregnant, recently miscarried? If a diabetic coma or simular, why did he let it go so far?
3. Why didn't he use contraception of the anonymous, non-prescription type you can buy over the counter, which significantly decreases male pleasure? Oops, I've answered my own question there.
4. Why is he only being charged with rape and POSSIBLE murder? Why not kidnap, false imprisonment, mental torture, child abuse,incest?
5. Isn't it likely he gave K up because he thought he would get away with it, on the grounds of diminished responsibility? lawyers are already arguing for such a defence.