How Do These Things Happen?

DNA proves Austrian the father in incest case

2 hours, 45 minutes ago

AMSTETTEN, Austria (AFP) - DNA tests in Austria confirmed on Tuesday that Josef Fritzl fathered six children with a daughter he kept prisoner in a cellar for 24 years.

As the shocked local community of Amstetten rallied around his traumatised victims, Fritzl appeared in court to be remanded in custody.

His 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and her children were carefully shielded from public glare, undergoing psychiatric counselling to help them try and adjust after their unimaginable ordeal.

Hundreds of people laid down candles under rain in Amstetten's main square on Tuesday evening to show their solidarity with the victims and their outrage at the crime.

Investigators said DNA tests had shown Fritzl was the father of six children born during Elisabeth's incarceration. A seventh died shortly after birth and Fritzl confessed to disposing of the body in an incinerator in his building.

That admission could prove pivotal when the case comes to trial, with a prosecutor saying Fritzl would face a life sentence if found guilty of manslaughter, as opposed to shorter prison terms for rape or incarceration.

Psychologist Paulus Hochgatterer, who is helping advise those counselling the family, said the three children Fritzl had kept underground were staying in a treatment container that could be locked from the inside.

Safely hidden from the global media spotlight, he said their treatment could take several weeks.

"Only very gradually are they being exposed to the outside world," Hochgatterer said, adding that "given the circumstances, they're actually doing quite well."

Three children never left the three cramped cellar rooms where they were held and had never seen natural daylight, while another three children were legally adopted by Fritzl.

With the help of letters from Elisabeth, Fritzl apparently managed to convince his wife they had been left on their doorstep. They lived upstairs in the family home, totally unaware of their siblings imprisoned below.

The two sets of children, who had been completely unaware of each others' existence, were tentatively beginning to get to know one another.

Two of the three who had spent all their lives underground "have a way of communicating that is anything but normal," added Berthold Kepplinger, director of the psychiatric clinic in Amstetten-Mauer.

The youngest child, five years old, seems most able to adapt to his new life and was excited about being able to ride in a car, his carers said.

Doctors would determine when police would be allowed to question Elisabeth Fritzl and the children, but that was unlikely to be for several days.

Local authorities said they had made all the necessary background checks for the adoptions of the three children.

"As of May 16, 1994 (the date of the first adoption), there is no criminal record for either Josef nor his wife Rosemarie," said the head of the social services in Amstetten, Hans-Heinz Lenze.

According to media reports, Fritzl was previously convicted of attempted rape in the 1960s and of arson.

Social services had made 21 documented calls to the house, as well as undocumented visits, during which Fritzl was usually absent, Lenze said.

Nevertheless, social workers never noticed anything amiss concerning either the children's education or health.

Letters found with the babies explaining that their mother could not take care of them gave the police no reason to search the Fritzl house, Lenze added.

The district court in Amstetten, which must greenlight all adoptions, also insisted it had acted correctly.

"There weren't any doubts about his (Fritzl's) integrity. Why should I put the child in a foster home, when it could grow up in a family," court president Josef Schoegl told the Austria Press Agency.

Chief police investigator Polzer said there was no sign that Fritzl's wife, who also had seven children with him, knew of the goings on in his locked dungeon.

"It would go against all logic that a mother of seven children would help the father of those children to look after seven more children whom he had fathered with his own daughter," Polzer said.

Nevertheless, police were trying to establish whether the man had other accomplices who may have helped him build the cellar.

They said they had ordered experts to look at the locking mechanism on the reinforced steel door to see if Fritzl could have set the whole thing up himself.