Thursday, May 1, 2008

Follow up on 'this is madness'...

Really hope the effected family can lead a normal life and continue to live a fruitful life. I think her will to survive and care for the children helped her all these years.

From CNN.

Incest family 'faces years in therapy'

(CNN) -- The woman and children held captive in a cellar for years by their incestuous father will take years to recover from their disturbing ordeal, doctors warned Wednesday as the family at the center of the case remained in psychiatric care.

Members of the Fritzl family will also be offered the chance to adopt new identities in an effort to help them lead normal lives, officials said.

Hans-Heinz Lenze, the head of local social services said the family was "doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances" and said any change of identity would be the family's decision.

Elizabeth Fritzl -- now 42 -- spent more than two decades in the windowless basement after being drugged, handcuffed and locked up by her father, Josef Fritzl, as an 18-year-old. Repeatedly raped, she gave birth to seven children by Fritzl, one of whom died as an infant.

Three of the children -- Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5 -- remained imprisoned underground with their mother. The other three lived in an apartment upstairs with Fritzl and his wife who believed Elizabeth had abandoned them after running away from home.

Elizabeth and five of the children were continuing to receive treatment at a local clinic near Amstetten after being reunited on Sunday. Kerstin, whose hospitalization at the weekend finally brought the family's plight to the attention of authorities, remained in a coma at a nearby hospital.

"It is astonishing how easy it worked that the children came together, and also it was astonishing how easy it happened that the grandmother and the mother came together," clinic director Berthold Kepplinger said. But Kepplinger warned that the family would require extensive counseling.

"We're talking of 20 years of darkness, incest and its effects and other illnesses they might have suffered from."

Kepplinger said the two sets of children were tentatively getting to know one another, adding that the two boys who had lived underground had an unusual way of communicating with each other.

A policeman who had accompanied the boys to hospital after their discovery on Sunday said the pair had "screamed with excitement" during the car journey as they experienced the outside world for the first time.

"The two boys appeared overawed by the daylight they had never experienced before," said Chief Inspector Leopold Etz. "The real world was completely alien to them... We had to drive very slowly with them because they cringed at every car light and every bump. It was as if we had just landed on the moon."

In an interview with the Austrian newspaper, Oesterreich, psychiatrist Max Friedrich, who treated the abducted teenager Natascha Kampusch, estimated it would take "between five and eight years" for the children to recover from their experiences.

Another psychologist, Bernd Prosser, told Austrian television that it would be impossible for the four held prisoner underground to lead normal lives. "I am afraid it is too late for that."

Kampusch, the Austrian girl abducted as a 10-year-old and held captive in a basement for more than eight years until she escaped in 2007, also offered her help to the family on Tuesday, but questioned the decision to move them from the cellar into psychiatric care.

"Pulling them abruptly out of this situation, without transition, to hold them and isolating them to some extent, it can't be good for them," said Kampusch, now 20, in an interview with Austrian TV station Puls 4.

"I believe it might have been even better to leave them where they were, but that was probably impossible. This case is not like mine, where that was not my environment. They were born there and I can imagine that there is a strong attachment to that place."

16 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello NW,
You see, when I first saw that news in newspaper, i thought I was given the right to curse someone.
Glad that the victims are getting the helps they need the most. I am very sure that mentally, they are exhausted tortured. Living in the basement, as a sex tool, I can't imagine life like that...

Nightwing said...

Yo Akmal,

I am sure a lot of people felt what we felt when we read or heard about the news.

Ya...hope they will live a good life from now on.

Cat Cat said...

Ah, I have been following the news too...
Apparently, the father had been to Thailand a few times for vacation and had fun with some Thais women too... What a %&&*^()_ old fart! Pardon my language, wing.

Nightwing said...

Hi Cat,

Ya...he gets to travel while the daughter get locked up....no worries about the language...i know how you feel.

Unknown said...

Hello Nightwing,

This is quite the top end of human evil-ness!

I think there are also lesser versions and not highlighted.

It is truly inhuman. It is certainly a blood curdling news.

Salt N Turmeric said...

the part of the story abt those kids reaction to the car ride makes me sad. i still say take the mom/grandmother to court too coz i kno shes involved!

Nightwing said...

Helo Kak Ruby,

Agree with you. Really...no words to describe it.

Nightwing said...

Hi Salt & Turmeric,

Ya..the car ride thingy..to them its a new thing...like Columbus discovered America.

Get a polygraph test on the mom/grandmother...i don't know...maybe she was too scare of the husband to doubt him.

But...for 24 years..not allow one step to the basement...should have set off an alarm in her.

Jeanne said...

hello...have a wonderful weekend

Monica said...

this monster should not see another day of freedom!!!

Nightwing said...

Hi Jeanne,

Thanks for dropping by...:)

You have a great weekend too.

Nightwing said...

Hi Monica,

Agree with you. He should suffer like what he did to his daughter.

J.T. said...

Hi Nightwing

Thanks for alerting me about this story the other day. I have been so out of touch with news ever since I went to Malaysia. Hardly watched TV or read international news.

This man is just sick, sick, sick. I cannot even begin to fathom what his daughter went through. He will pay for he has done.

Nightwing said...

Hi JT,

Ya...this is indeed a sad case and so far everyone i asked/tell ..same reaction.

That guy is a real class act and will deserve what is coming for him.

Anonymous said...

There are a lot of sick ppl in the world..

Nightwing said...

Hi Sue,

Ya..one really have to becareful when dealing with people.

More than meets the eye.

U take care now.