House of Horrors

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Dr Bracey also pointed out that, after witnessing the repeated rape of their mother by their grandfather/father, the children may also consider such behaviour to be ‘normal’. ‘These traumatic events may represent normality to them,’ he said. ‘But they will have a sense of distrust for men and male figures.’

  However, he believes they may be able to put the horror behind them with time and therapy. ‘It is possible but there will be constant reminders for them,’ he said. ‘They will always be known as “those children” and have to put up with constant reports, books and even films about the events but there is a chance they could adapt and adjust and lead normal lives.’

  Then there is the plight of Elisabeth Fritzl herself. Psychologist Anne Carpenter, a specialist in helping adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, considered her case in the New Statesman. A consultant forensic clinical psychologist employed within the Forensic Mental Health Directorate of Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, Carpenter has worked for over 20 years with victims of child abuse, female offenders and mentally disordered offenders. She has also worked extensively with Victim Support Scotland and is a member of the Parole Board for Scotland. ‘The story of Elisabeth Fritzl, the 42-year-old woman who was imprisoned in a cellar and raped by her father over a 24-year period, is so shocking it is inconceivable to most of the public,’ she said. She saw Fritzl’s treatment of his daughter as an extreme case of sadistic emotional and sexual abuse.

  However, child abuse is widespread and the treatment of its victims commonplace in the mental health field. Progress has been made in this area, Carpenter said. In the last 30 years, academics and clinicians have developed a greater understanding of the complicated psychology of survivors of abuse. ‘Clearly, this woman is likely to require extensive help and support to come to terms with her dreadful ordeal,’ she said. ‘However, those involved in her recovery will need to be cautious and sensitive, particularly as she will have grown used to her emotional and physical needs being over-ridden by her abuser. In fact, she may be unable to articulate or even recognise them.’

  According to Carpenter, Elisabeth Fritzl would be feeling a range of conflicting and confusing emotions – shock, disorientation, anger, guilt and sadness, as well as happiness and relief at having been rescued from her long ordeal. It was likely that she would shift rapidly from one emotion to another in the early stages of resolution and would need gentle support from those caring for her.

  ‘Ms Fritzl will have to be gently encouraged to express her own needs and make her own decisions,’ said Carpenter. ‘Living in a cramped cellar away from normal social contacts will mean she has lost many basic life skills – meeting people, shopping, using a telephone, even crossing the road – all will be strange and daunting tasks.’

  But Carpenter warned against heavy-handed intervention. She believed that intensive psychological therapy was often inadvisable in the immediate aftermath of extreme trauma, particularly at a time of extensive police and media interest. Recent research undertaken on the subject of counselling demonstrated that, in the immediate period after distress, probing too deeply and too quickly into feelings can be counterproductive. ‘Any disclosure of abusive experiences can lead to the individual feeling that they are being abused all over again,’ she said. ‘People often describe traumatic “flashbacks”, where they feel as if they are being pulled back into the past and are being abused again.’

  No one would want to put Elisabeth Fritzl through that.

  ‘They may experience sounds, smells or sensations which can feel distressing, as if they are losing their minds. Such experiences are quite normal and are the mind’s ways of rationalising and understanding the incident. They are, however, very alarming.’

  Because of the prolonged sexual nature of her abuse, Elisabeth was likely to be extremely sensitive emotionally. After all, the whole world knew what she went through and, in such cases, the disclosure of the details of the abuse was particularly difficult where the victim was unaccustomed to being treated with respect. Having grown up in a strong Catholic tradition, she might even expect to be punished or blamed. As she had been accustomed to abuse for most of her life, Elisabeth Fritzl may even expect to be abused again by those looking after her.

  Having been completely in the power of her tyrannical father for so long, she would have lost all individual initiative. She would expect her therapists to tell her what to do in every particular – where to go, what to eat, who to speak to, and when. Consequently, at the preliminary stage she would need gentle support, which would be crucial in helping her resolve and understand her feelings, Carpenter continued. At this stage, all those involved should be telling her that they believe her and know it was not her fault.

  Survivors of sexual abuse often express feelings of extreme guilt. They feel guilty because they did not stop the abuse – even though, as in this case, they were in no position to do so. Although people rarely voice such feelings, in the back of their minds, they ask, ‘Why didn’t I stop it?’ Even though the question should never be put so bluntly to Elisabeth, it would always be hanging somewhere in the air.

  Victims of sexual abuse also feel guilty because they ‘let’ it go on for so long. This would be particularly difficult for Elisabeth Fritzl. She suffered seven years of abuse before she even entered the dungeon. But it started at an age where she was much too young even to known what was going on, let alone stop it. Then, when she grew old enough to understand what her father was doing to her and might have been mature enough to put an end to it by fleeing, she was incarcerated. For years, she must have cursed her stupidity in allowing herself to be lured downstairs. Early on, while chained up and kept alone and in the dark, she was forced to make that terrible compromise. As she put it herself, ‘I faced the choice of being left to starve or being raped.’

  Under such circumstances, she may still have the nagging doubt that she might have been in some way complicit in her own sexual abuse. Elisabeth could also be feeling additional guilt because she was forced to submit to her father in front of her own children.

  Victims also, perversely, feel guilty because the abuser has been arrested. After all, Elisabeth put her own father behind bars. She had promised to maintain the fiction that she had run away to a cult so that she could go and see Kerstin in hospital. And, at first, she did her best to be as good as her word. It took several hours of police interrogation before she ‘betrayed’ her father. Of course, what Elisabeth Fritzl did, by any standards, was entirely justified but in her fragile emotional state, she was likely to reflect some of the burden of guilt on herself.

  Working with abuse survivors and sex offenders has helped clinicians understand the very complex relationships that exist between them and Carpenter believes that Elisabeth was likely to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. ‘Identified in the 1970s, Stockholm Syndrome recognised that, where a victim is dependent on their abuser for their very survival, a curious, almost infantile attachment can develop,’ she explained. ‘The victim may hotly defend the perpetrator and even apportion much of the blame to themselves; particularly where they have been told by the abuser that they are to blame.’

  In Elisabeth’s case, such an attachment would be reinforced by the fact that the hostage-taker was her father. She would need to be reassured that such feelings are normal and she would also need help to express them. This would not be possible if she felt that she would be labelled as ‘mad’ or complicit, said Carpenter.

  Elisabeth Fritzl faced other issues not usually seen in victims of sexual abuse. She was the mother of six children – children about whom she was likely to have ambivalent feelings. They were all active, daily reminders of her unwanted incestuous relationship with her father. All of them, to a greater or lesser extent, had also been abused. As a parent, she was likely to feel guilt that she did not protect them – even though she had done everything in her power to save them from harm.

  As a parent of more than one child, you always wants to be even-handed in dealin
g with your children. In Elisabeth’s case, this would have been particularly difficult. After all, she knew the children who shared her imprisonment far better than those who had been taken from her soon after birth. Also, it would be hard not to favour those who were, like her, the victim of Fritzl’s sadistic decision to imprison them in a cellar over the children who lived a comparatively easy life above ground in the fresh air. The children would, of course, be similarly conflicted and would also need extensive support to help them understand and cope with those complex feelings.

  Elisabeth Fritzl’s reintroduction to Austrian society is likely to be long and traumatic; it may even be as traumatic as her first few months in captivity. To start with, she needs to be shielded from the eyes of the world as she is helped to reconcile the very complicated and conflicting emotions that she is probably now experiencing. However, there is the shining example of Natascha Kampusch to follow – Natascha has been strong enough to turn her suffering to her advantage. She has not wallowed in victimhood, but rather used her ordeal as a springboard to build a new life and career and she has offered Elisabeth Fritzl her help.

  Of course, if one can compare such things, Elisabeth’s suffering has been far more profound and long-lasting than that of Natascha, but she has survived it, when many weaker souls would not have done so. One can only hope that she has enough self-possession to use that ability to flourish in the outside world.

  For now, though, she is having to cope with the abrupt transition from a world where she would have felt very alone to one where she is constantly surrounded by other people. She has moved from a world where the only other adult she knew was the man who monstrously abused her to a world where she is attended by people who want to care for her. And she will have appreciated very quickly that her feelings are far from unique – many others who have suffered abuse and ill-treatment have similarly relied on professionals to ease them through the pain of their past and the discomfort of the transition period. But many have come through with their lives – and their futures – intact. One can only hope that Elisabeth will also begin to feel that relief and release from her past, and look optimistically towards her future as soon as possible.

  The question remains – what was the role of Rosemarie Fritzl in this horror story? It seems certain that she had no direct knowledge of the imprisonment and abuse of her daughter in the cellar. However, there were signs that could have alerted her, questions she should have asked and clues that, had she followed them up, would have unmasked the secrets of the House of Horrors.

  Her passivity demonstrates the peculiar nature of marital dependency and the lengths to which some women will go to preserve the façade of normality and respectability. Misplaced loyalty, fear or self-deception allow all kinds of women – from battered wives to the partners of paedophiles – to suspend disbelief under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Like Rosemarie Fritzl, they learn not to question for fear of receiving an answer they do not want to hear, or for fear of the repercussions. To some wives, a husband can simply do no wrong, whether he is a philanderer, a violent drunk, a junkie, a thief, a spy – or a murderer, even when evidence mounts up to the contrary. Rosemarie Fritzl playing ‘the perfect grandmother’ simply demonstrated an extreme form of what therapists call ‘cognitive dissonance’.

  Incredible though it may seem, psychologists agree it was possible that she refused to question her husband about his strange absences. She did, after all, tolerate his sex holidays in Thailand and his visits to brothels and swingers’ clubs. Abused and tyrannised herself, she may have reached a point where the only response to each implausible story was denial.

  ‘It is perfectly feasible that she did not know,’ said Dr William Conn, an expert in child abuse and neglect. ‘Living with a tyrant who exercises immense control eventually prevents the dependent partner from being able to process the information or challenge anything. Challenge ceases to be an option.’

  Dr Conn believed that exercising this control would have been a turn-on for Fritzl. ‘The element of power over other people would have been part of Josef Fritzl’s sexual arousal,’ he said. ‘He seems to have orchestrated a system where he was unchallenged. This was not just a secret world; he appears to have been arrogant enough to believe he could police everybody inside it.’

  Curiosity, in those circumstances, would have been unwise. After her other children had flown the coop – and no longer wanted as a sexual partner – Rosemarie Fritzl would have found her life empty. The three babies that turned up on her doorstep gave the middle-aged woman a renewed sense of purpose. To question their appearance might have risked losing them.

  ‘Maybe it was to her advantage – and she knew it – not to ask questions,’ said Michael Berry of Manchester Metropolitan University’s department of psychology. ‘He is in control; he tells her what he wants her to know. She knows her place and keeps her mouth shut. They live almost separate existences. That is not uncommon – but here it is taken to the extreme. The fact that he travelled to Thailand on his own for weeks at a time, without her making a fuss, is interesting in itself. I am amazed at how utterly confident he appears to have been in his own ability to run a double life without detection.’

  Fritzl’s ability to dominate his partner so utterly, and thereby avoid detection over the truth of his secret activities, is by no means uncommon. ‘I am familiar with cases where a woman has not known she has been living with a paedophile for 20 years and with women who do not know they are married to a spy,’ said Berry. ‘The wife has often ignored the signs that others would see.’

  These women are in a state of denial and refuse to ask questions because they do not want to hear the answers. The case of Rosemarie Fritzl merely takes this to the extreme. ‘The difference here is that the crimes were committed under their own roof,’ said Berry. ‘If his wife has been in denial, the revelations will have been a major shock for her. She will not want to believe it. It will challenge all her values, beliefs and expectations, but there will come a time when all the pennies start to drop.’

  However, most parallels from the psychology of abuse break down in the face of the terrible atrocities perpetrated in the cramped prison beneath the Fritzls’ ordinary-looking house. In its locale, there are echoes of the case of Fred West, whose wife Rose became his accomplice in the torture, rape and murder of ten women in Gloucester, including their own daughter Heather, burying them under the house and in the garden. In that case, too, the neighbours suspected nothing.

  ‘Nobody in their right mind would be capable of envisaging such a scenario,’ says Berry. ‘The secret of Fritzl’s success is surely that no one could even imagine this.’

  The Wests pursued their murderous careers for 20 years without anybody noticing. Harold Shipman, the Manchester GP who murdered his elderly patients, continued undetected for 21 years.

  ‘The tough question is: how could this have happened for so long?’ said Professor Andrew Silke, a psychologist specialising in criminal behaviour. ‘It is harder to believe there was no indication of evil goings-on than that there was some, but that it was ignored.’

  Austria itself is now in the midst of a period of soul-searching. First, it was the Natascha Kampusch case, now Elisabeth Fritzl – two abductions, two secret cellars. And there has been one admission of failure on behalf of the authorities – and it concerns the statute of limitations. Fritzl’s conviction for rape was erased from the record books after ten years. Had it remained, perhaps more questions would have been asked. Following the Fritzl case, the Austrian parliament has begun to consider changing the legislation, although some people believe this will not help Austria to become a more open society.

  ‘We’re a country that is very particular about data protection,’ said Professor Friedrich of Vienna University. ‘We tend to look the other way when a child gets a smack in the face, rather than be brave and intervene, and say what are you thinking? What are you doing? We respect privacy so much that we don’t pick up the phon
e and call the police to send someone over. Everyone is left to mind their own business. We have a saying in Austria: “Don’t get involved.”’

  Nobody did. As a consequence, Elisabeth Fritzl underwent an unspeakable ordeal for 24 years. She has been robbed of the best years of her life and the three children she brought up in the dungeon may never recover.

  As the Austrian writer Thomas Glavinic puts it, ‘Austrians hardly ever notice anything that might cause them discomfort.’ He also asks, ‘How many more of the 700 people officially missing in this country are sitting in some underground prison as we speak?’ And how many more will join them now that the genie is out of the bottle?

  But in the Fritzl case, there is, at least, hope. On 9 June 2008, Kerstin was finally roused from her coma. The doctors made sure that her mother Elisabeth and her brothers Stefan and Felix were on hand when she regained consciousness. Apart from her brutal captor, they were the only people she had ever known. As soon as it was clear she was awake, she was moved to a special medical ward at Amstetten Regional Clinic to be reunited with her mother and brothers in a special room designed to look like the cellar she has known all her life. She would now have to begin the long-term physical and psychological therapy her fellow captives started a month before. The prognosis is good. Her mother has already made a remarkable recovery and, against doctors’ advice, she insisted on speaking to the police.

  ‘She’s determined to ensure her father, who may claim he is too ill to go on trial, doesn’t escape justice,’ a spokesman said.

  Elisabeth was determined to testify via video link at her father’s hearing in July; her children will testify later. They are expected to give their evidence in pre-recorded sessions. The family’s testimony is necessary for prosecutors to complete their case against Fritzl, who faces a string of charges including manslaughter, incest, rape and incarceration. The hearings are expected to be closed to the public.