Austrian admits 24-year abuse of daughter in dungeon

Maritxu · 04-30-2008, 06:33 AM

I was waiting all these days to post this wondering if you'd heard about it. It's freaking crazy.

Quote:

"(Fritzl) has now said that he locked up his daughter for 24 years and that he alone fathered her seven children and that he locked them up in the cellar," Fritzl had also admitted to burning the body of one of the children when it died shortly after birth, said Polzer. Austrian media reported he had burned the corpse in a boiler.
Three of the children -- two girls and one boy -- were brought up by Josef and his wife.

Austrian admits 24-year abuse of daughter in dungeon - Yahoo! News

Quote:

The main question reverberating from the small Austrian town: How could a man keep his daughter locked in his basement for 24 years, where she gave birth to seven of his children while her mother and three of those children lived upstairs without an inkling of the horrors in the cellar?
Fritzl explained Elisabeth's disappearance by saying she had run away from home, a story backed up by letters he forced Elisabeth to write, including one that begged her parents not to look for her.
Other letters made it seem the missing daughter had left the three children on the parents' doorstep -- when in fact they had been born in captivity in the family's basement.
Elisabeth told police that she and her three children Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5, did not see the light of day during their entire time in captivity underneath the building in Amstetten, a rural town about 150 km (93 miles) west of Vienna.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/eu...lar/index.html

Helena · 04-30-2008, 06:46 AM

It is absolutely horrible. What totally boggles the mind is that not only the guy's wife (who may very well be lying), but none of the other locals either suspected anything. I mean, it's not like the house is in a desert; it seems to be a nice suburban street and a populated neighborhood. Unbelievable.

Maritxu · 04-30-2008, 06:50 AM

It makes you wonder if it's just because we don't even know who we live with or if people just look away.

Helena · 04-30-2008, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maritxu

It makes you wonder if it's just because we don't even know who we live with or if people just look away.

Exactly.

Also, this case has reinforced my dad's hate for Austrians; then again, he hates basically everyone except Hungarians, so I guess the point is moot.

Maritxu · 04-30-2008, 06:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helena

Exactly.

Also, this case has reinforced my dad's hate for Austrians; then again, he hates basically everyone except Hungarians, so I guess the point is moot.

Haha I love Austrians (I only know personally one and he is a very good guy) If I generalize, I try to do it for the better, lol
My professor of social psychology says that stuff like this could happen everywhere (people not helping) there are a lot of examples of it in the US for example (rather old article by the Times magazine):

Quote:

Why People Don't Help

Friday, Jul. 18, 1969

It was a hard murder to forget. Thirty-eight people passively watched as a man stalked, stabbed and killed Kitty Genovese, 28, in the predawn darkness of the Kew Gardens section of New York City five years ago. All heard her screams; none came to her aid. Since then, the paralysis of the innocent by stander has spurred psychologists to in vestigate man's unfortunate proclivity for playing the Bad Samaritan.
Why do people fail to help their fellow man? Fear, apathy and indifference are not quite the answer. Instead, the scientists' experiments show that the average citizen's instinctive concern for his fellow human beings is too often restrained by a taut, subtle web of social pressures. Particularly in groups and crowds, write John M. Darley of Prince ton and Bibb Latane of Ohio State in a recent and already classic report, "un til someone acts, no one acts."
Seeping Smoke. Even the act of seeing an emergency is surprisingly difficult, Darley and Latane point out.
"Americans consider it bad manners to look too closely at other people in public," the scientists write, "and are embarrassed if caught doing otherwise."
What people do see is often ambiguous.
Smoke seeping from a building may mean a fire or a broken steam pipe; a man sprawling in a doorway may be having a heart attack, or may be just sleeping off a bender. In trying to decide whether a situation is critical, the researchers say, "a person often looks at those around him to see how he should react himself. In general, it is considered embarrassing to look overly concerned, to seem flustered, to 'lose your cool.' A crowd can thus force inaction on its members by implying, through its passivity and apparent indifference, that an event is not an emergency."
In one experiment conducted by Latane and another colleague, college students in a waiting room heard a tape recording that simulated the sounds of a woman climbing onto a chair to reach a stack of papers. She fell, injured her ankle, and began to moan, "Oh my God —my foot! I . . . can't get this thing off me." Seventy percent of the people who were waiting by themselves offered help; with another person in the waiting room, only 20% showed their concern.
Even without group pressure, notes Stanford Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, people will rarely intervene in an interfamily situation for fear of violating a social code. Husbands and wives can literally beat each other to death before most outsiders will step in; recent studies of the estimated more than 30,000 "battered children" injured by parental abuse every year indicate that as many as 4,000,000 people were familiar with at least one such case of family violence and that most of them did nothing.
Helping others is not encouraged by law, as many people are aware. In most states, good Samaritans who intervene can be sued for their trouble and must bear the cost of any injuries they may suffer. Helpers weighing the possible risks of intervening are also concerned about losing their freedom, says University of Wisconsin Psychologist Leonard Berkowitz. When one person helps another, says Berkowitz, the helper almost inevitably feels that he has come under the sway of the person whom he is assisting.

We may think we would all help and that the Austrians and Americans are the special case. But we would most certainly be wrong and attibuting something like this to a culture insteand to a group process would be an ignorant thing to do.

Helena · 04-30-2008, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maritxu

Haha I love Austrians (I only know personally one and he is a very good guy) If I generalize, I try to do it for the better, lol
My professor of social psychology says that stuff like this could happen everywhere (people not helping) there are a lot of examples of it in the US for example (rather old article by the Times magazine):

We may think we would all help and that the Austrians and Americans are the special case. But we would most certainly be wrong and attibuting something like this to a culture insteand to a group process would be an ignorant thing to do.

Re: the bolded part - and this is why you represent the peaceful loving leftists, while my dad is the bitter hateful type, heh-heh. If he joined PH, he'd probably issue and provoke several death threats within 48 hours.

Seriously though, I don't think it has much to do with a particular "culture" either, I guess it's just one of those "deeply human" things. And either way, the pervert is creepy beyond belief.

Quote:

When one person helps another, says Berkowitz, the helper almost inevitably feels that he has come under the sway of the person whom he is assisting.

Hmm, interesting perspective, albeit no very uplifting.

elvispresley · 04-30-2008, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maritxu

I was waiting all these days to post this wondering if you'd heard about it. It's freaking crazy.

Austrian admits 24-year abuse of daughter in dungeon - Yahoo! News

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/eu...lar/index.html

Appalling!...

Chocking!...