Woman held captive by father for 24 years

[Raph's Girl]

Oy... saw this on the news. Majorly sick! I seriously doubt the mother was unaware of what was going on.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=180762&src=109

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

Authorities said that the father may have told acquaintances and relatives that his daughter had joined a cult and disappeared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police said Elisabeth F. appeared "greatly disturbed" during questioning and agreed to talk only after authorities assured her she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be cared for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday's developments are reminiscent of the case of Natascha Kampusch, which shocked Austrians less than two years ago.

Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. She was held for the next 8½ years by Wolfgang Priklopil, who largely confined her to a tiny underground dungeon in his home in a quiet Vienna suburb. Priklopil threw himself in front of a train just hours after Kampusch's dramatic escape on Aug. 23, 2006..

[Ra]

I just saw this as well. Seriously, how sick must you be to do that to your own child for 20 years?

[Barkworm]

I heard about this on the news yesterday. I've heard about some sick sh*t before but this is the most disgusting thing ever.

[AquaParade]

Yup. I was also told about this yesterday. Geeze...Just makes you realize how much sick stuff is going on in the world right this minute.

[Jo Dawn]

I heard about this, also... But only really read into it earlier today. I have an extremely hard time believing that the mother had no idea. But I also don't doubt it, either. If we couldn't imagine this happening, how can we imagine that? Plus, not that I'm trying to be on her side, because I think she's full of it, but obviously this guy had some kind of iron fist type deal and she bought into it.

But I do wonder why he chose some of the kids and not the others. And that must have been some seriously thick flooring to mask the sounds of that many people AND babies and kids throughout the years.

[愛]

I may be dead on the inside, but even I find this story pretty f*cked up.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by Jo Dawn

And that must have been some seriously thick flooring to mask the sounds of that many people AND babies and kids throughout the years.

It says she was locked up in the cellar of an apartment building. With my parents being superintendents, and having been in the basements of every building they've ever run, I can tell you that these places, particularly in areas near the boiler room, are like some kind of fortress.

It's no coincidence that when the zombies start rising, I've already got the plans to live in the basement of my apartment building drawn up.

[Jo Dawn]

Wow, I missed that! Hmm. Though I did know about the coded basement doors, I didn't know if they were reinforced more or not.

[Warhorse]

Saw this earlier on the evening news. What is happening here. Why so many creepy ass freaks are in the world. They are still fresh on the polygamy case in Texas, and now we have this. What's next?

[Ninjinister]

This guy officially goes on my list of most twisted assholes ever. Can we even count him as human? He's more like some sort of monster.

[Mars-Chan]

I think I quote a certain someone when I say "ZOINKS!"....

[Revan]

This is a very sad story. Completely unfair that this poor girl's life was ruined.

And this made me particularly sick

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

sad

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Mars-Chan

I think I quote a certain someone when I say "ZOINKS!"....

What you doin' quoting me!

But in all seriousness, this is messed up. I mean not just the locking your daughter in the basement, but the having little inbred babies with her that also live in the basement. I hope they thorw the book at him.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

She at least had a TV, but do you think she cared about watching the news or learn about what happened outside the house? Did she know about the Berlin wall being demolished in November 1989, Germany re-united in October 1990 and the USSR being split in December 1991. And the Gulf War in 1991, the wars in Yugoslavia 1991-2001, home computers and the Internet becoming a part of everyday life in the late 1990's, and the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 and the following wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all other stuff that happened?

[Drtooth]

Disgusting. All I can say. I just wanna know what drove him to it. Or was he just naturally effed up?

[Barkworm]

Originally Posted by Drtooth

Disgusting. All I can say. I just wanna know what drove him to it. Or was he just naturally effed up?

He had been convicted for rape before, so it's the latter.

[Warhorse]

Read an article on the internet a bit about this case. Says relatives of the family were always wary of the man, and really did not like to talk to him during family gatherings because the simplist things would set him off and he would become a "tyrant" in their words.

I really don't understand, how one man can have such a fear hold on a whole family. I could maybe understand if he was like in some mob, or part of a police force where the family knew he would have help covering up stuff. But this man apparently was alone. I still cant understand how a group of people can be afraid of one man.