For 24 years, Josef Fritzl kept his daughter Elisabeth imprisoned in a specially-contructed ” flat” in the basement of his house. He had drugged and locked her in the basement when she was eighteen and subjected her to constant sexual abuse until she was in her 40s. . Her disappearance was explained by a note that he forced her to write saying she had run away to join a cult.
The flat had no windows and between the ages of 18 and 42 Elisabeth never saw the sun. In that tiny, sunless prison, she gave birth to seven children. Three of the children had not seen the sun either until they were released last week. Another child had died in infancy and been incinerated by Fritzl. Three were `found´, as tiny babies by Fritzl and his wife on their doorstep. The infants came with a note from Elisabeth asking for them to be brought up by her parents. They were duly adopted by their father/grandfather and knew nothing of their siblings or their mother until the whole tragic story came to light last week.
The details of Elisabeth´s unspeakable ordeal are slowly coming to light. And, they are horrific, but the big unanswered question is,How did Fritzl get away with it? The tragedy took place in a small town, with his wife and several lodgers living within feet of the unfortunate Elisabth and her babies´for 24 years. No-one noticed anything, apparently. And, certainly, as a prominent local builder, developer and domestic engineer, Fritzl had an excuse for taking massive amounts of equipment, building materials and rubbish to and from the basement.
Today, the Austrian justice minister said that local officials had been “gullible” in accepting Fritzl´s reasons for Elisabeth´s disappearance. Is that really all there was to it? Anyone who knows something of the pattern of sexual abuse of a daughter by a father will suspect that there was far more to it than mere gullibility.
For a start, pedophiles are incredibly clubbable. They cannot resist forming pedophile rings to provide each other with cover and with contacts and, of course, a supply of additional victims. As far as I know, there has never been a case in which a pedophile operated in isolation.
When I was part of an informal support group for the wives and children of active child-abusers, the frequency with which they had encountered policemen, doctors, social workers, lawyers, magistrates and judges who dismissed or blocked their complaints and returned the children to the “care” of their pedophile husbands, was heart-breaking
So, if Fritzl has been an active member of a local pedophile ring – and the video of his holiday in Thailand gives a strong hint that he was – the group will be working feverishly to cover their tracks. They may include prominent figures in the community. They will present a united strategy to say that Fritzl had never given a hint of what he was doing. They will bully their wives and children into silence on what they know. They will helpfully steer investigations into blank walls. They will destroy address books, files, videos, computer discs.
But, the rigorous investigation that Elisabeth and her children deserve might succeed in “rolling-up” Frizl´s pedophile network and then, it seems to me that one or two of those “gullible” officials could well end up in the dock with him.
Tags: Austria, gullible officials, JOSEF FRITZL, sexual abuse
