When you put it that way, I'm not sinking the Lusitania, as we speak!
EWWWWWWWWWWW.
*goes to throw up*
*speechless*
Fritzl also criticized media coverage of his case as "totally one-sided.
That damned librul media strikes again.
I saw that earlier today. I'm too disgusted to comment.
That may be the Platonic Ideal of "a low bar."
(By these standards, I'mma get beatified any day now.)
He also said that he knew what he was doing was totally mad and disgusting even when he was building the bunker (he started 2 or 3 years before he put his daughter in there).
That makes it all better.
/snark
The good news - if he sticks to that story, there is no chance for him to plead insane.
Deadra, He started it 6 years before he put her down there. When she was 12. A year after he started raping her.
Yeah, he is a monster.
There's an even more repulsive one up now at cnn.com about how he really cared for his secret family.
Some choice quotes:
"I tried as best I could to care for my family in the cellar," Fritzl said in the published comments.
and
Fritzl also said that he considered good behavior and decency important and that Elisabeth had stopped following rules when she hit puberty.
Fritzl concludes that he "must have been crazy" to do what he did.
"Incest Father"
MSNBC.com has been calling him "Sex Dungeon Dad." Because, you know, rape is the same as sex, and dungeons are spooky and cool, and guys who lock up their daughters for two decades are still entitled to paternal terms of endearment.
Sorry - I'm still on Tuesday's news, for the most part.
Josef, if you had killed them all then, YOU WOULDN"T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP RAPING THEM REPEATEDLY now, would you. You friggin' waste of skin!
gosh, I guess it just GREAT that you didn't eat them little by little either.
Gracious. By those standards, George W. Bush deserves to win the Nobel Prize for invading Iraq. After all, he *didn't* invade Iran, Syria, or Jordan. Quite the peacemonger, when you think of it.
/snark.
Words truly fail. Fritzl is monstrous beyond all belief.
You know, it takes a certain kind of... monstrous self-absorption to say that you should get a fucking COOKIE because you didn't kill the daughter you imprisoned and raped. Sweet FSM, what an asshole!
I just read the whole interview.
...I tried to take good care of my family in the cellar. When I went down to the bunker, I brought flowers for my daughter and books and stuffed animals for the children. I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth cooked our favourite meals. Then we all sat at the kitchen table and ate together. ...
sick sick sick sick sick
I could have killed all of them
Yup, monster.
You may not of heard this over your side but now they believe that he was also sexually abusing one of his "daughters/granddaughters". Nothing definite as of yet as they are being very careful in their statements due to the virtually impossible task of interrogating the victims.
And to be truthful, I believe monster is far to benign for something like this.
Fucking goddam monster doesn't even fucking begin to fucking describe this evil fucking bastard bleeding fuck!
The pretence unraveled when the eldest child of the incestuous relationship, a 19-year-old daughter, became seriously ill and was taken to hospital more than two weeks ago.
What word really doesn't belong in that sentence? How the flaming fuck can they describe this a RELATIONSHIP?
Actually he's been raping her for 31 years. The abuse started when Elisabeth was 11.
I would like to propose that we revoke Friztl's membership in the human race.
Hey, and I've never nuked anyone! Do I get a cookie?
What a disgusting piece of shit. I can't even think of a punishment good enough for this poor excuse for a human being.
That may be the Platonic Ideal of "a low bar."
Carolyn, that made me laugh, and then I felt like I had to throw up. This guy is pretty much the definition of "monster."
I could have killed all of them
I'm sure he made sure to remind them of it, too.
From the CNN piece Chingona mentioned:
"I constantly knew, over the entire 24 years, that what I did was not right, that I must have been crazy because I did something like this," Fritzl was quoted as saying.
No, Fritzel. Crazy might have applied if you didn't know what you were doing. The word you're looking for is "evil."
But I guess he's going for the pained remorse and "no punishment can be worse than that what I feel inside" defence.
But I guess he's going for the pained remorse and "no punishment can be worse than that what I feel inside" defence.
Oh, yes. "I'm the true victim here! Look at my inner torment!" Barf.
How much you want to bet the rules she was breaking when she hit puberty that necessitated her being imprisoned had to do with the fact that he was raping her (ie., that "she was being a slut")?
Yes, oddjob, absolutely.
This story drives me fucking insane. It seriously makes me want to go gibbering mad.
You know, this story just keeps revealing more and more layers of creepy.
The fact that this guy (who cited Nazi "discipline" as an influence on this whole thing) threatened them with being gassed if they tried to escape?
So.
Fucking.
Gross.
oddjob | 05.08.08 - 4:33 pm | #
Good (and despair-causing) point, oddjob.
How much you want to bet the rules she was breaking when she hit puberty that necessitated her being imprisoned had to do with the fact that he was raping her (ie., that "she was being a slut")?
Actually, he never said that. He made those seem completely unrelated.
But I bet her "rulebreaking" was a big reason why nobody really looked for her. Different times, thank god.
But I guess he's going for the pained remorse and "no punishment can be worse than that what I feel inside" defence.
Y'know, there are lots of cases where I'm 100% behind that defense. Anything that turns one terrible mistake into a lifetime of grief and horror for the perpetrator qualifies: forgetting your baby is in the car, for instance, and going into work all day.
This is so far from that they're barely on the same planet.
A few people in this world are truly evil. Not many, just a few.
The CNN story has links to a few others including a couple of trips to Thailand - without any family members. Is it too cynical to suspect he was so depraved as to be bored of raping his usual victims?
That may be the Platonic Ideal of "a low bar."
Carolyn, that made me laugh, and then I felt like I had to throw up. This guy is pretty much the definition of "monster."
CE | 05.08.08 - 4:27 pm | #
That's Saint Carolyn to you.
"I constantly knew, over the entire 24 years, that what I did was not right, that I must have been crazy because I did something like this," Fritzl was quoted as saying.
No, Fritzel. Crazy might have applied if you didn't know what you were doing. The word you're looking for is "evil."
SunlessNick | 05.08.08 - 4:27 pm | #
Having been crazy, (clinical anxiety comorbid with depression), I can buy fucked up brain chemistry making you do weird, embarrassing, or otherwise counterproductive shit. Having gone a few days without eating because walking across the kitchen to get food was just too much, I can totally see how someone with, say, voices in their head could be in an even worse place.
But even untreated schizophrenia does not make one incapable of telling right from wrong. If his crimes had really been driven by actual mental illness (barring psychopathy) and he had finally been caught, he would be falling over himself in gratitude to the people who stopped him from doing those horrible things that he couldn't stop himself doing. Not harumphingly defending himself for not being even worse.
So fuck off and die, Fritzl. Us crazies don't want you, either.
So fuck off and die, Fritzl. Us crazies don't want you, either.
Carolyn | Homepage | 05.08.08 - 4:41 pm | #
Seconded. Need help polishing that halo? 
I don't think there's a way I can respond to this that won't involve frothing, and violent destruction of the nearest object.
he would be falling over himself in gratitude to the people who stopped him from doing those horrible things that he couldn't stop himself doing.
- Carolyn
A few years back in the UK we had a high profile case of a couple of paedophiles who opposed their own release on exactly those grounds - they knew they would rape children again, they knew it was wrong, they knew they couldn't stop themselves - so they asked others to.
oh hell, just kill him now.
Remember Rod Serling's Night Gallery? There was this episode where this guy is put in this dark, maze-like house as punishment for something or other. And he struggles to find his way out, and his only "comfort" is that the fiend who put him in there had said there was ONE way out. Eventially, he falls through this trap door into the cellar, and, looking up, the fiend appears above him, on the ledge. And the guy says, "But you promised there was a way out!" And the fiend says, "There is," as he tosses down an empty revolver and one bullet, and slowly closes the trap door to darkness.
Such is my fantasy for Mr. Fritzl.
we had a high profile case of a couple of paedophiles who opposed their own release on exactly those grounds - they knew they would rape children again, they knew it was wrong, they knew they couldn't stop themselves
Good for them. It is the only appropriate and decent response, when you have a mental illness that causes you to commit crimes. Carolyn's absolutely right: if Fritzl had actually been ill, he'd be thrilled to be in prison, not trying to defend himself with this "I could have killed them" crap.
Yeah. He's filth through and through.
Is it too cynical to suspect he was so depraved as to be bored of raping his usual victims?
Not at all. A day or two after it first broke there were reports of women saying they recognized him as someone who had raped them as well.
A few years back in the UK we had a high profile case of a couple of paedophiles who opposed their own release on exactly those grounds - they knew they would rape children again, they knew it was wrong, they knew they couldn't stop themselves - so they asked others to.
SunlessNick | 05.08.08 - 4:50 pm | #
This happens so often, and not just with pedophiles. It's hard to empathize with violent criminals, pedophiles, and so forth, but in many cases, before they victimize anyone, people with mental illnesses that drive them to hurt others beg for help, and get nothing. Then, when their self-control finally runs out or their illness kicks up from a triggering event, they end up in the prison system, when they should have been in the mental health system* all along. And their victims are scarred, or dead, when early intervention could have saved not only them, but the criminal before they became one, as well.
*Not that we have a mental health system in the US.
Where's my cookie for not doing any amount of shit? Wow, he wins the entitled asshole of the year.
Carolyn | Homepage | 05.08.08 - 4:59 pm | #
Ack, what happened to my comment? Carolyn, I was agreeing with you - good mental health care is damn difficult to find even if you're well-off and have good insurance, and I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to know you're going to do something wrong, want to get help, and be consistently denied access. Because it happens all the time in this country, and it's horrifying for people who can't get treatment and for their victims.
Fritzl isn't ill, though, from what I can tell. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and he did it for a quarter of a century, and I hope he rots in hell.
I read the BBC article about this earlier. In that one he was insisting he'd built some sort of time-delayed release into the door in case he died and was all, "See? See? I'm lovely. If I'd died, I would have let them out."
This whole story made me cry with sadness and rage when I first heard about it, and every day it manages to get worse. What is wrong with the universe? I hate everyone, especially him. Fucking evil rapist tosspot.
Where's my cookie for not doing any amount of shit?
There are dozens of people I didn't murder today either. Gimme a samosa.
Carolyn, I was agreeing with you - good mental health care is damn difficult to find even if you're well-off and have good insurance,
CE | 05.08.08 - 5:06 pm | #
Too true. If not for a strong support system and a whole bunch of upper-middle-class privilege, right now I'd be homeless, or dead.
Fritzl isn't ill, though, from what I can tell. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and he did it for a quarter of a century, and I hope he rots in hell.
Well, there's a long philosophical digression possible here about how, yes, he's ill, because by definition, a well person would not do anything like what he did. But having a damaged soul (for want of a better word, said the materialist) is not an organic mental illness the way he's claiming.
I wish he could be made whole, because then the horror he'd feel at what he did would make any temporal punishment moot.
Well said Carolyn
"I could have killed all of them -- then nothing would have happened. No one would have ever known about it."
Actually, you could have refrained from raping and imprisoning your daughter (or anyone else) in the first place. THEN nothing would have happened. No one would have known about it because there wouldn't have been anything to know about, what with the absence of raping and imprisoning. See how that works?
But, you did rape her. Repeatedly. Kept your daughter imprisoned in order to continue the raping for decades. And that, Josef Fritzl, does indeed make you a monster.
There are dozens of people I didn't murder today either. Gimme a samosa.
Mmm. Samosas...
Well said Carolyn
sunburned counsel | 05.08.08 - 5:19 pm | #
Thanks.
I'm uncomfortable with the "monster" rhetoric. You see when the Nazis come up, too. It's problematic because it serves to otherize evil, when in fact, horrible, gut-twisting cruelty is very human. Denying that seed in ourselves does nothing in the service of stopping it sprouting.
If I could make everyone read one book, it would be Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, by Roy F. Bauminster.* It's not exactly deathless prose, but it quite thoroughly makes the point that evil is very much the domain of people, not monsters.
*Man, was I disappointed when he popped up with some MRA-style bullshit a while back.
Exactly Carolyn. I know WHY people talk about monsters and evil, but I think it is the same compulsion as deifying Christ- it others it, and makes the everyday "us" no longer capable of that sort of evil, or that sort of great good. I think, unfortunately in the case of Fritzl, and fortunately in the case of Jesus or Gandhi, that they are all, intensely, human.
Again - well said, Carolyn.
Have you read Hannah Arendt?
Geez, what a freak. He really wants to be thanked for not killing his victims instead of terrorizing and violating them for years. What a prince!!!
"I constantly knew, over the entire 24 years, that what I did was not right, that I must have been crazy because I did something like this," Fritzl was quoted as saying.
No, Fritzel. Crazy might have applied if you didn't know what you were doing. The word you're looking for is "evil."
But there's no evil defense like there is an insanity defense.
Also -- I don't know how it works in Austria, but in the US, just being mentally ill isn't enough -- you have to be unable to distinguish right from wrong, essentially. So his self-awareness that he was doing something wrong, even if he was compelled by some illness to keep doing it, would have tanked any insanity or diminished-capacity defense here.
This is like Ted Bundy saying he should get a reduced sentence because he didn't burn the bodies of his victims, grind up their bones, and then scatter everything into the sea. No, instead, he displayed GREAT COMPASSION by leaving a body for the families to bury.
I mean really. Like (hopefully!) most of you, I didn't publicly poop on a baby today. According to Fritzl, that means I'm now eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize.
I'm uncomfortable with the "monster" rhetoric. You see when the Nazis come up, too. It's problematic because it serves to otherize evil, when in fact, horrible, gut-twisting cruelty is very human. Denying that seed in ourselves does nothing in the service of stopping it sprouting.
Carolyn,
I'm very sympathetic to the idea of not "othering" evil, of facing up to our own capacity for it. An excellent point.
But I still think there is some difference between massive group participation in evil (slavery, Nazism: in which there is a certain *social* confirmation that what one is doing is right)
--and the actions of someone like Fritzl who now claims to be "sick" because "why else would [he] have done this?"
It's not that the actions of one or the other are less heinous. It's that it's easier for me to understand people getting swept up in an evil which others share. It's more difficult to comprehend the workings of someone like Fritzl, who (as far as we know) worked on his own and had no one egging him on or telling him he was right.
(Sorry if that's rambling. I'm figuring final marks and it always makes me less than coherent.)
It's more difficult to comprehend the workings of someone like Fritzl, who (as far as we know) worked on his own and had no one egging him on or telling him he was right.
aphra_behn | 05.08.08 - 6:07 pm | #
Oh, yes, it's much easier to fall into systemic evil, but also bear in mind Frietzl didn't go from "normal" to "locking up his daughter, rape her, and force her to continue the resulting pregnancies" overnight. He started with sexual abuse (so common as to be almost "normal" in itself, *shudder*), and built from there.
The human mind is amazingly good at rationalizing, for good or ill. It let Frietzl continue with what from the outside was completely, obviously unacceptable, because he worked into it slowly, but that resiliency in extreme circumstances is also what allowed his daughter and her children to survive.
Again - well said, Carolyn.
Have you read Hannah Arendt?
Deadra | Homepage | 05.08.08 - 5:45 pm | #
"The banality of evil." Yes, ages back.
I think he would do well to keep such thoughts to himself, seeing as he still has to face trial and (presumably) sentencing. That's not likely to go over well with a judge or jury.
What he did do was just too horrifying.
" I could have killed all of them"
I'm guessing there were times they'd have been happier if he had.
"they knew they would rape children again, they knew it was wrong, they knew they couldn't stop themselves - so they asked others to."
I recently had one of the shocks of my life when a man I'd worked with on a daily basis for *years* was picked up on child porn charges. This is a guy I trusted enough that I'd have been comfortable leaving my son with him if I'd brought him to work and needed to go to a meeting or out to pick up lunch or something. Apparently the guy admitted it instantly when he was caught. I am *hoping* that, like the pedophiles mentioned in the quote, that came from a place of knowing he was wrong and wanting to stop.
And yeah, he has kids of his own. I used to buy girl scout cookies from his daughter :-(
Oh, yes, it's much easier to fall into systemic evil, but also bear in mind Frietzl didn't go from "normal" to "locking up his daughter, rape her, and force her to continue the resulting pregnancies" overnight...
The human mind is amazingly good at rationalizing, for good or ill.Carolyn - 6:17 pm
Oh, absolutely. Social movements don't begin with the extremes either (i.e., Nazism didn't start out with the Holocaust, and race-based slavery didn't start out as what it became later). I just (personally) have much more trouble processing the individual journey than a collective one.
Some of us are stronger-ego'd individuals when it comes to external persuasion, I suppose; admirable when standing up to totalitarians, abominable in Fritzl's case.
(And, to be truthful, pondering it is making me rather queasy.)
This whole story made me cry with sadness and rage when I first heard about it, and every day it manages to get worse.
- Jen
And every single time, I've convinced myself that it's as bad as it can get.
It's got the point where I feel guilty about feeling so horrified - like I'm trespassing on the hurt of the actual victims. Does anyone else feel like that?
I recently had one of the shocks of my life when a man I'd worked with on a daily basis for *years* was picked up on child porn charges.
I had a similar experience - a guy who'd been a family friend for decades (and was a magistrate, for fuck's sake) was done for downloading child porn. What I don't know is how much he wanted to stop, but a lot of people tried to make excuses for him. I won't repeat them, because they're horrible.
It scares me the things people can rationalise in their own minds. I imagine that even while this guy had them imprisoned he was saying to himself "It's not that bad - I'm looking after them." It makes me want to leap through the screen and yell, "You raped your daughter! You locked her in a dungeon! You don't get a side!"
Oh, and absolutely, SunlessNick. Every time I read one of these stories, a little voice in my head says, "And what do you think they're feeling?" Sometimes it almost feels self-indulgent to be so horrified and disgusted, because I'm only reading about it.
oh hell, just kill him now.
rrp | 05.08.08 - 4:52 pm | #
Whilst I am normally strongly opposed to the death penalty, this particular individual seriously makes me reconsider that train of thought.
As horrible as the whole story is, it's this seemingly harmless aside that bothers me:
"I watched adventure videos with them while Elisabeth cooked our favourite meals."
Yeah, I bet Elizabeth enjoyed those warm, homey moments, cooking dinner for dear old dad. After all, she exists just to serve him.
I've pretty much had to stay away from this story, because it is so triggering for me -- but I wanted to say that WOC PHD had a post up this week with good links to further coverage about his history as a rapist.
At some point, I'll probably have a lot to say about this story, but it's too close to the bone for me right now.
Oh, yes, it's much easier to fall into systemic evil, but also bear in mind Frietzl didn't go from "normal" to "locking up his daughter, rape her, and force her to continue the resulting pregnancies" overnight...
At least one of the same "friends" who described him as normal and a nice guy also said he picked on Elisabeth as a child and hit her more than the others. So he started out in a society where beating women and children was did not earn disqualification for the "nice" label. He just took the concept family as property to the logical conclusion.
And Goya told us that the sleep of reason can produce monsters.
His lawyer, his shamefull lawyer!!! Mr. Meyers that only wants to get fame!!! He has offered himself to defend "the most famous prisioner in the world", according with the newspaper "Der Spiegel"...just for fame, for fame, infame fame!!! Shame over him...!!!!
I kinda wish I hadn't seen this post.
I have to check out the cute, kitty-cat video below now to clean out my brain.
JJohnson said: "I don't think there's a way I can respond to this that won't involve frothing, and violent destruction of the nearest object."
You said it perfectly.
I also feel guilty about this whole story. I'm beyond horrified but I read everything I can about this.
Everytime I see news on this waste of human flesh, I read it. It's like I think if I could just understand that behavior or find the cause... then nothing like that would ever happen again.
It's time like this that I'm thankful that I've held on to a glimmer of faith in Christianity. I pray more than anything that God is with the victims every day and healing them and that they no longer feel so much pain.
I pray that there is a hell and its waiting for Fritzl. Eternal torment doesn't seem long enough.
"I could have killed all of them"
I'm guessing there were times they'd have been happier if he had.
Broce, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Father's Day is coming up. Maybe we should send him a card or something.
"Have a miserable Father's Day, and may your bowels and internal organs liquefy."
Please don't allow rapists, including some fathers who actually live among us in America, to excuse themselves because they might think we are saying this or that kind of rape is not "that" bad. We are hearing the same kind of justification from this man.
Why condone a little male abuse, a little institutionalized unfairness? Who decides how much? It's all wrong.
Still, I think abandoning male privilege might be more difficult than nuclear disarmament. Thank goodness for the teaspoons.
"Incest father" is a trashy, attention-getting nickname. He is a monster. May he never see the light of day outside of prison walls. May he grow old, in half-light. May light come into the lives of his children, into their hearts, and into their eyes.
"I could have killed all of them"
I'm guessing there were times they'd have been happier if he had.
Not only that, but each one of them knew that he could kill them anytime he wanted. So those "movie and dinner family nights" (ugh, just ugh) were really just another form of mental torture.
I'm in Austria now and trying to avoid the wall-to-wall coverage as much as possible. However, two little points to throw into the mix:
** "he could have killed them all" - he was probably thinking of it, and might have killed before. At least the police are going around re-opening old murder cases that happened around him. Also, he IS facing murder charges for one of the babies who died. So he doesn't get that medal after all.
** the guy is a serial rapist and very violent. He was convicted for rape 30 years ago or so, the judge giving him a light sentence on account of his large family (if that's not crazy-making, nothing is. Makes me want to remove my brain through my eyes with toothpicks). Local hookers, whom he visited REGULARLY for chrissakes, would refuse to "go upstairs" with him to be raped for money, because he was so depraved and violent.
To the Austrian commenters above: I have a question.
The media here--last I checked--is saying Fritzl is facing 15 years for rape. Why don't they pile it on like American prosecutors do? You know, 2300 counts of rape, four counts of false imprisonment and kidnapping, failure to get a dog license, tax evasion, for a total of 9 million years?
I don't know the details of Austrian law. But really it's technical. The level of outrage + shock here is so high that he is never getting out.
I saw this happen in Switzerland with a serial rapist/torturer/murderer: technically, the maximum sentence is 20 years (in Switzerland). They just found a way to keep him in forever, because he admitted, and everyone knew, that if he got out, he would just start over again.
I'm not a big one for divine assistance, but the fact that she survived seven unassisted chilbirths might be the closest thing to proof I've ever seen.
Oh, but he was a caring father! He brought her medical books so she'd "know what to do when the time came"--Jesus, she must have been terrified.
Austria, I believe, has a "Dangerous Offender" clause in their legal system. Canada also has this clause, and how it works here is that the sentence handed out upon a guilty plea/verdict isn't the end of the story. In extraordinary circumstances, the Crown can apply for a Dangerous Offender designation at parole, or when the sentence is up. A whole bunch of things will be contributing factors, and I'm not a lawyer by any means. But essentially, while he may get only 15 years sentenced, he is surely in jail for the rest of his life. The clause is designed for precisely this kind of crime. Even if he were younger, and therefore more likely to outlive a 15 year sentence barring any kind of prison shivving, he still wouldn't be getting out.
All that is just my layperson understanding, of course. I can't remember where I read that Austria has a Dangerous Offender clause, so I may be wrong on that.
"I am not a monster"?
Oh Fritzy, I think most of the enlightened world disagrees.
If he's not a monster, I don't want to know what a monster is.
Just a misunderstood nice guy.
If I believed in reincarnation, I'd hope he comes back in his next life as a cockroach.
I don't think that he should be killed at all, and not because I'm anti-death penalty. I want him kept alive for a long long time so he can live with his guilt.
I remember reading about this when it first came out thinking that there's no way he could have avoided raping Kirsten too. I'm a survivor and that's the way abusers think.
I'm also living in Austria. I live in Vienna, but outside the city this is an extremely conservative country in many ways. In fact, the daughter ran away at one point in her teens, and the authorities just brought her back, no questions asked (that could of course happen in much of the u.s. too). That coupled with the connection to Nazism that much of the older generation still feels should tell you a lot about Austria.
What I find interesting here is that this individual is allowed to speak for himself in the media. His words defending himself are actually printed, with context. This insane criminal is permitted to spread his crazy ideas for the world to read. Maybe that's considered freedom of speech and the paper, by printing it, allows the readers to judge the (in)sanity of his position.
Contrast that with US media treatment of political figures. Every day the media chooses to cherry pick quotes and run them inside preset narratives of what readers supposedly already 'know' about a candidate. When, outside of YouTube or a political blog, was the last time you read a speech, or even a lengthy quote from a speech, in a newspaper or magazine?
Well, you can't keep abusing dead children, now can you? So even letting them survive was self-serving.
I wish I believed in hell.
Hey Jimbo, maybe we should meet for a Wiener-Shakers Kaffeeklatsch?
I think the big cities in Europe often have more rural surroundings that are pretty conservative. Look at Zurich, less than 40 minutes away from the last few square miles in Europe where women could not vote (they only gained the right in Appenzell in 1998, if memory serves).
If any good comes out of this case, I think it will be because of general horror and disgust at the logical excesses of the patriarchy (this guy is a monster if you will, not crazy at all if you ask me, but certainly mostly the archetype of the old testament patriarch, with rights of life and death over his children-womenfolk-chattel-slaves). Especially because there has been so much "oh he was an upstanding member of society and only beat his kids a little, just being strict you know and his wife was a nice quiet little meek terrified thing, really everything was normal" going on after they discovered the prison. Actually I don't like the term prison, because they were in something far worse, much more like a medieval dungeon, where people were left to die.
Permission to vomit, Your Honor.
From the latest story that Petulant linked to, Frietzl is now claiming that:
Fritzl said he found himself trapped in a inescapable cycle once he had locked up Elisabeth.
No Frietzl, SHE was trapped. YOU had three quite simple ways out:
1. Let her out.
2. Not lock her up in the first place.
3. Not be evil scum.
Some lessons I've learnt:
Our safety is illusion,
our wealth does not make us better human beings,
people, living under developed or under-developed countries, are subject to the same human horrors
I wake up every morning thinking about this story: and it gets more and more worse to think about it...
"I want him kept alive for a long long time so he can live with his guilt."
I said the same thing about the Bike Path Rapist when he was caught.
Then, it occured to me. That assumes that he feels guilt.
I don't believe either of them do.
Aside from feeling sorry for themselves because they were caught, they feel no guilt for what they did to any women. At all.
This is the "Der Spiegel" report:
http://www.spiegel.de/
internatio...,551451,00.html
For 24 years Josef Fritzl led a double life: Above ground, he played the upstanding family man, while in the basement he imprisoned and raped his daughter. Details are slowly emerging of how he ruthlessly planned his terrible crime.
- Der Spiegel
It's so refreshing - and sick and depressing that it is so refreshing - to see a report call it what it is in the first paragraph.
http://www.spiegel.de/
internatio...,551660,00.html
"8,516 Days in Darkness"
"Elisabeth Fritzl and her children, forced to live in a windowless basement for 24 years, vegetated away like the sole survivors of a nuclear holocaust. For them, the Cold War speculation over what it might be like for people who could never go outside again and return to the earth's surface was a reality."
This is the second half of the report from " Der Spiegel"...
much more like a medieval dungeon, where people were left to die.
Oubliette?
I am still horrified and feel helpless.
" I am still horrified and feel helpless."
Between this, De Anza, Romona Moore (HUGE TRIGGER WARNING.) and the countless others out there, I'm about ready to grab every woman I can find and run away to our own Lost island. Enough.
Cassie,
That sounds awesome. If you're really interested in a meeting of like-minded folks in Vienna (maybe we could even get a shoutout on the webpage) write me at jspangler@gmail.com.
And you're right about much of rural Europe being so conservative. The really amazing thing is when you look at the numbers of how many people in central europe live in rural areas. I believe it's about 60% in both Germany and Austria.
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