Fritzl himself, apparently, has had a change of heart. The prosecutor in charge of the case, Christiane Burkheiser, who had questioned him twice, said that he was now being ‘cooperative’. It has yet to be determined whether he is fit to stand trial.
EPILOGUE
It is, of course, impossible for a writer to know the age of their readers, but if you are over 42, think of all the things you did between the ages of 18 and 42. If you are under 18, think of all the things you intend to do over the next 24 years. Think of all the holidays, all the countries you have visited or want to visit, all the trips you have been on, all the meals you have enjoyed in restaurants, all the nights out you have had, all the films, plays and exhibitions you have seen, all the sporting events you have attended, all the lovers you have had, all the walks you have been on, all the parties you have been to, all the family events you have enjoyed, all the jobs you have had, all the work you have done. Think of how full those years have been or will be, and all the emotions you’ll have experienced in that time – joy, sorrow, excitement, love, despair, pride, sympathy, fulfilment … Now imagine all that has been taken away from you.
Put in place of it hours, days, weeks, months, years of complete inactivity, endless spans of time when all you can do is sit or lie down, barely able to breathe. And remember what the head of the Fritzl investigation Franz Polzer said: ‘I believe that, in those 24 years, life must had felt as if it lasted ten times as long as the real time.’ Imagine sitting or lying down doing nothing, not just for 24 years, but for 240 years. The depths of boredom you would experience would be unfathomable. Remember, throughout those 24 or 240 years, there would be no end in sight. Your suspension between life and death may go on for ever.
Imagine, too, the dim light and the low ceilings, the feeling of the weight of the bunker-like building pressing down on you. You would feel as if you had been consigned, alive, to your grave. The only hint that time is passing would be the distressing decay of your own body. It would be as if you were locked, fully conscious, inside your own corpse as it rots. This is truly a living death.
How many times would you have thought about killing yourself? How many times might you have clutched at some faint hope of rescue, only to abandon it in the face of the pitiless reality of your situation? How many times would you dream of liberation, or being in the great, big world outside, only to wake to find yourself in the unchanging world of your dungeon? How often would you absentmindedly think about whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter outside, day or night, raining, snowing or sunny … or how things outside might have changed while, for you, everything stayed the same? And how many times would you have thought of family and friends, knowing they were blithely unaware that you were close by?
Now imagine that vast expanse of empty time being punctuated only by more suffering. Your only human contact is with the person you hate most in the world, who is coming only to beat, rape and humiliate you. You crave human contact but, at the same time, dread it. Remember, he is not just going to abuse you physically, he will torment you constantly with the hopelessness of your situation. He is going to remind you on every possible occasion that your friends and relatives – everyone you care about – and the authorities who are supposed to protect you, have given up on you. They are not looking for you; they don’t care. You are, in their eyes, as good as dead. Even the master of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe, did not manage to conjure up this horror. You exist solely in a dimly lit, living nightmare.
Then there is the whole business of childbirth. The baby growing in your belly is the product of incest. Will it be hideously deformed or retarded? Will you survive the birth if there are complications? How will you cope with the baby if something goes wrong? In this situation, you are young and utterly alone. There’s no one you can call on for help if anything happens – even though your own mother is but a matter of metres away, no one can hear your screams. There is no loved one, or even a sympathetic stranger, to hold your hand. You even have to cut and tie off the umbilical cord yourself.
Think of the pain of giving up your children, even though you know they will be better off than those who remain with you. Think of living with your little ones, seeing them so full of curiosity and life, and watching that life being slowly snuffed out of them day by day by the endless monotony to which they have been confined. Think how selfishly you love having your children around you, just for the company of another human being, although you would give everything, including your own life, to free them.
Your monstrous father – a man so utterly in control and so utterly evil – is robbing them of their lives as well as you of yours. But you once had a life; you knew what it was like to be outside. You have felt the rain on your face, the wind in your hair. Your children have never known that and may never know it. As far as you know, they have been condemned to the House of Horrors for ever. On top of every other atrocity your father has subjected you and your children to, he may well allow you all to die of starvation and neglect down there. There’s no reason to believe that he will ever let you go free. You have been locked away for eternity without hope.
Now what should be done about a man like Josef Fritzl, who inflicted such a living hell on his own flesh and blood? And his lawyer Rudolf Mayer is right: Fritzl is a man, not a monster. Being a man makes his crimes all the more abhorrent. Fritzl did not have to behave in the way that he did towards his daughter and their children because he had to, because it was his nature; he chose to behave in that way, which makes his actions worse.
At the time of writing, doctors have roused Kerstin from her coma and it looks as though she may live. This means that Fritzl will not face a murder charge in her case, at least, though he may be charged with murder over the death of baby Michael. But, in some ways, it is immaterial. No punishment could be devised that would possibly fit the enormity of what he has done. He is already 73 and he is going to die in prison or a mental hospital, possibly even before his case comes to trial. But even if he was released from prison tomorrow, where could he go and what would he do? Everywhere in the world, he would be shunned and vilified. Someone would surely take the law into their own hands. If he was beaten or tortured, would the authorities intervene? Who would protect him? The likelihood is that he would be killed within ten minutes of being set free.
But never mind about him; he is beneath contempt and deserves no concern at all. It is Elisabeth and her children who have earned the respect and admiration of the professionals who are treating them as well as the media and wider public. They are the ones who deserve to feel the love, sympathy and admiration of the whole world. Elisabeth has been through an ordeal that I am sure most people could not have survived without going mad or simply giving up the will to live. She endured the 24 years of privation and horror with enough strength and practical sense to seize the opportunity to escape when it came. A shining example of courage, an inspiration, she has shown what heights the human spirit can soar to, just as her father has demonstrated to what depths it can sink.
In the writing of this book, I spent five weeks sitting in my basement flat. Elisabeth Fritzl spent 1,235 weeks in her cellar – 247 times as long. My own weeks have hardly been an ordeal, but sitting in one place for five weeks has left me stir-crazy. I keep jumping up from my desk and pacing about. It is time to go out into the sun. After being acquainted with the ordeal of Elisabeth Fritzl and her children over these weeks, I am grateful that I can do so.
POSTSCRIPT
Since I completed the manuscript for House of Horrors there have been some significant developments. Firstly, after nearly eight weeks, Kerstin has been fully awoken from her coma. Her mother and brothers – the only other people she had seen in her life, apart from the monster who sired her – were present throughout the whole process It was thought that awaking to be greeted by others might have proved too traumatic.
She was also aided into consciousness by the playing of her Robbie Williams’ CDs. ‘She still had the breat
hing tubes inside her but she was sitting up in bed waving her arms and dancing in bed,’ said Dr Reiter. ‘She wants very much to go to a Robbie Williams concert.’
Doctors have said that she is expected to make a full recovery.
‘For all of us, Kerstin’s surprising recovery is a great relief,’ said Berthold Kepplinger, who will oversee her psychological adjustment. ‘We are going to give her a special diet with extra vitamins and an exercise regime to help her.’
In due course she is to be questioned about whether Fritzl also committed incest with her.
In June, her grandmother, Rosemarie, returned to the family house at 40 Ybbstrasse to pick up clothes and toys for her six-year-old grandson Felix. She also visited the dungeon, Austrian authorities said. According to reports, Mrs Fritzl told friends that she does not want to live in the ‘tainted’ house again. It is thought that the house will be knocked down.
Since emerging from the cellar the children have been gradually weaned off television, their only contact with the outside world while they were in the cellar, but the ban was relaxed during Euro 2008 so that they could enjoy the football.
Elisabeth was eager to testify against her father via video link at hearings set to begin in early July. She feared her father might die before he stood trial. However, doctors determined that she was not well enough to do so yet. The preliminary hearings have been postponed.
Nevertheless, though initially it was thought that the case might take two years to prepare, it is now said that the trial may take place before the end of the year. Court spokesman Franz Cutka said that the case will now begin this autumn or winter as preparations are running ‘at full speed’.
It seems that a woman judge will officiate at the trial. Forty-eight-year-old Andrea Humer, Austria’s most senior female judge, has been scheduled to preside over the Fritzl case. One of her first tasks will be to oversee Elisabeth’s deposition. Prosecutors also need to interview Elisabeth’s children and her mother Rosemarie.
Meanwhile, a disturbing number of similar cases have now been reported. It appears that women have been imprisoned and sexually abused in makeshift dungeons in France, Belgium, Hungary and Italy. The latest case comes from Skopin, in Russia, where factory worker Viktor Mokhov held two local girls for three years in a five-metre-square bunker under his garage equipped with an electric oven and a bucket as a toilet. At the press of a button Mokhov was able to cut off the ventilation if his victims refused to fulfil his sexual fantasies.
Mokhov admitted to being a copycat. He said he got the idea after watching a documentary about the criminal Aleksandr Komin, who, ten years ago, built a vault where he forcibly kept two slaves. He tattooed the word ‘SLAVE’ on their foreheads and made them stitch robes for his makeshift enterprise. When Mokhov saw Komin describing how he built the cell on television, he said to himself, ‘I can do better than that!’
One can only pray that there is not a wannabe Josef Fritzl out there.
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