Discussions
Fritzl planning to plead insanity
Posted by timethief • 5/11/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: abuse, child abuse, incest, unlawful confinement
The wife of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years beneath their house and had seven children with her, is to be questioned again by police to determine whether she knew about his secret life in the cellar.
Elisabeth had told police that her father had begun sexually abusing her at the age of 11. In comments to his lawyer last week, Fritzl denied this.
He claimed he had raped his daughter only after locking her in the cellar in 1984, when she was 18. The “urge to taste the forbidden fruit was too strong” for him to resist, he said.
He claimed he had been forced to lock up his daughter because of her “drinking alcohol and smoking”. She had run away to Vienna for three weeks to escape what she described in a letter to a friend as “this hell”. A worse hell awaited her, however.
“I had to do something,” her father said. “I had to create a place where I could keep Elisabeth, by force if necessary, away from the outside world.”
Fritzl, who is planning to plead insanity at his trial, said that being an only child had influenced him, as had the Nazi-era mania for order and discipline.
“In reality, I wanted to have children with her [Elisabeth],” he said. “I was looking forward to the offspring. It was a beautiful idea for me, to have a proper family, also down in the cellar, with a good wife and a couple of children.”
He went on: “I always wanted to have many children. Not children that would have to grow up alone as I did, but children who would always have someone to play with. I had dreamt about a large family ever since I was a little boy.”
Fritzl was remanded in custody for another month on Friday. The investigation into how he managed to run his private concentration camp under the noses of neighbours was expected to take six months and his trial could be held before the end of the year.
Prosecutors said Fritzl was likely to face charges of manslaughter – as well as rape and unlawful imprisonment – for not providing proper care for Michael, the baby who died in the cellar in 1996. Fritzl incinerated the corpse in the basement furnace.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3908866.ece
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who raped his daughter for 24 years in a dungeon, humiliated his wife at a swingers club by forcing her to watch him have sex with another woman. Paul Stocker, a builder —who tried to sell Fritzl a house — claims he saw him at the Caribik Club, near Amstetten, back in 1997. "An elderly couple came in, they looked just like an old pair you might see in a park feeding the pigeons," the Mirror quoted Stocker, as saying. "I was speechless when I realised it was Fritzl with his wife. She went without a word to stand in the corner. He treated her like a dog. She had to sit in a corner and watch as he did stuff with a young woman."
Paul Stocker says Fritzl bragged about using Viagra to boost his sex life.
Fritzl is also reported to have confessed to his lawyer that he wanted to have sex with his mother. The 73-year-old admitted the "strong woman" was a key influence in shaping his twisted psyche – as was growing up in Nazi Austria during World War II. Fritzl told how as a youngster he developed a fixation on his mother Rosa because she was "the best woman in the world" — and said he had to fight his urge to have a sexual relationship with her.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Fritzl_forced_wife_to_watch_him_have_sex_...
Do you believe that Fritzl's wife did not know or suspect what was going on in her basement?
User Comments
-
This Fritzl guy is clearly demonized and evil.
In the case of incest, the "innocent" parent may have had suspicions but the absolute horror of it may have caused her to brush it off as "impossible". We may never know what was in the heart of this woman/grandmother, and such is not really important to me.
The emotional agony of Elizabeth and her children must be overwhelming. I pray for healing, freedom and justice for them. -
with luck he will not be allowed to plead insanity as he clearly has been /and is aware of what he has done. As for his wife knowing or not the plight of their daughter, I doubt we will know for sure this man ruled his house by fear, however it has still not been explained that when he went on holiday how elizabeth and her children survived.
I have already blogged on the subject cayasmbeingsingle.blogspot.com -
Didn't this happen in Australia? There isn't really any such thing as "pleading insanity" in Australia. The specifics vary by jurisdiction, but at least some areas in Australia deem a person incompetent to have committed a crime if he was "unable to control" the actions. In contrast, nearly all U.S. jurisdictions have rejected "irresistible impulse" as an aspect of the insanity defense.
I still think that would be stretch to say that this man was unable to control his actions, but it is relevant to note that "pleading insanity" doesn't necessarily have the meaning each of us automatically associates with it from our own judicial systems.-
It happend in Austria.
-
no, it's in austria, not australia. -
@MadameX
This happened in Amstetten, Austria. -
Okay, here's a brief summary of Austrian "insanity defense" law--doesn't seem like anything that's been reported in the news qualifies him here:
'MENTAL INCOMPETENCE OR MENTAL ILLNESS.' ACCORDING TO THE NEW BIOLOGICAL-PHYSIOLOGICAL METHOD, AN OFFENDER CANNOT BE CONSIDERED RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS IF CERTAIN CONDITIONS RENDERED HIM INCAPABLE OF COMPREHENDING AT THE TIME OF THE CRIME THAT THE ACT WAS WRONG AND OF HIS DOING.
THE FOUR EXTENUATING CONDITIONS ARE
(1) MENTAL ILLNESS (I.E., ENDOGENOUS PSYCHOSES AND OTHER ORGANIC DISTURBANCES, BUT NOT ABNORMAL DRIVES AS IN GERMAN LAW);
(2) LIMITED MENTAL CAPABILITIES (I.E., IMBECILITY AND DEBILITY, INCLUDING BRAIN DAMAGE, BIRTH DEFECTS, AND SENILITY);
(3) ELEMENTAL DISTURBANCES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (I.E., PATHOLOGICAL AND NONPATHOLOGICAL SEMICONSCIOUSNESS, BUT ALSO DISTURBANCES FROM SLEEPLESSNESS OR OVEREXHAUSTION),
(4) OTHER SEVERE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTURBANCES EQUIVALENT TO THOSE CITED (E.G., EXTREME NEUROSES, PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS), WITH THE PRINCIPAL DIFFICULTY BEING ESTABLISHMENT OF WHICH CONDITIONS CAN BE CONSIDERED 'EQUIVALENT
-
-
The saddest part of this is that regardless of whether he pleads insanity or not, is that this family will need a couple of generations to even be considered vaguely normal again. I would doubt that any of his kids will ever lead normal happily married lives and thats a tragedy to begin with. -
i believe it is completely possible that fritzl's wife did not know. you have to really look at the layout of the house. this was not a basement like most Americans think of as a basement. he was a very very controlling man and several years before he kidnapped his daughter, he filed plans to create a cellar below his building. he and his wife lived on the second floor; he leased the first floor to tenants.
the cellar was painstakingly dug out over several years and apparently this is how he was able to create a secret area. because he was a control freak already, it was not unusual for him to declare in no uncertain terms that NO ONE was EVER allowed in his cellar "office" and "workshop."
given his tastes and his control issues, i believe his wife definitely fell into battered wife syndrome (regardless of physical abuse, the syndrome holds true for those who are manipulated for years on end). it's quite easy to think that elisabeth, who was planning to leave home and escape her father's tyrannical ways, could have run away to a cult - as josef claimed to his wife and to the police.
was his wife suspicious about why he didn't sleep in their bed every night? she probably was, particularly given that he had sex with a woman and made her watch. i would guess, however, that she was simply grateful not to have to put up with his crazy arse and had no clue that he'd created a dungeon to imprison elisabeth.-
Many homes in Germany and Austria are like ender describes them, the cellar is quite seperate from the rest of the house and the wife would probably never need to go to it since everything she would need would be upstairs.
-
@ Mattclark The family were warned NEVER to go into the basement as this was his workspace!!!
-
-
Insanity? This guy is nuttier than a fruit cake.
And, "no" to your last question, T.T.-
@jackpayne
Thanks for giving a straight answer to my question which is: Do you believe that Fritzl's wife did not know or suspect what was going on in her basement?
My answer to this question is also "no".
-
-
Take him into the streets and shoot him ... many many many times.
And I am a pacifist. No excuses. Get rid of him.
Harsh is only a bit of what his daughter and her sibling/children endured. Take him out. -
This situation is just a normal issue here in the Philippines. There are several cases where the father raped all his daughters and was forgiven by his wife later before the case can progress.
It is a very sad reality that this psychos are taking advantage of the weaklings and can easily get away with it.-
@Praining, this is not about a wife's forgivenes it's about a man imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in the cellar of his home where he raped and abused her also having fathered seven children with her, one of which died, and he incinerated.
-
@Praning
I think I see what you are getting at. In the cases you point to the wife would not testify against the husband. I do not have any knowledge of the law where you live. In my country wives cannot be compelled to testify against their husbands.
Sadly, I believe that there are probably other women, young men and children, who are currently being imprisoned by relatives or others for use as sex slaves in all countries all over the world. -
And even within the U.S. there are significant jurisdictional differences. In some states, the privilege belongs to the testifying spouse, so that the wife could choose to testify or not. In others, the privilege belongs to the other spouse, or both spouses, such that the wife's testimony would not be admissible even if she wished to testify--at least, as to statements made to her by the husband--because he could assert the privilege and prevent her from testifying.
Re the initial issue of forgiveness: there's nothing about forgiving a person that precludes telling the truth about what he/she has done.
-
-
Yes, I have read that article from your post yesterday...
I was just pointing some similar instances here in our country. -
Sick man, ought to be properly punished. Not insane, demented.
Add Your Comment
Login to leave a message.
