Josef Fritzl Offered Counseling To Be Able To Cope With The Trauma Of His Trial
I know this isn’t really celeb or entertainment news, but the title of this article caught my eye. It talks about how the trial of Austria’s Josef Fritzl is so traumatic for him that he is being offered counseling to deal with this horrible experience:
The self-confessed incest rapist is being held at St Poelten prison, next to the court, and its vice president Erich Huber-Gunstofer said his most famous incumbent was being offered psychiatric support.
“He is being offered psychiatric care to help him through the ordeal of the trial,” he said.
“He can watch television because he has access to TV in the communal areas and he can also read the daily newspapers.
“He has told us that he doesn’t want to exercise in the yard during the trial but he can do afterwards if he wants to.
“He has two people to protect him at all times. They don’t discuss the trial with him but we are offering him therapists and he does share a cell with two other inmates.
“There is no special treatment for Josef F.”
OH no, no special treatment for him…other than the fact that he’s being offered therapy for the stress of the trial, which is more than he offered his own daughter Elisabeth for the stress of being raped over 3000 times while living in a dark, cold, damp basement for 24 years. And certainly no therapy for her during that horrific time, while she was going through the worst experiences of her life, just oversized sex toys and the fact that he was considerate enough (I really hope you see that as the sarcastic remark it is) to add on another room to the dungeon so he wouldn’t have to rape her in front of her children. What a guy.
I’m not going to go into all the details of his horrific crimes…suffice it to say they are legion. If you’re really interested, you can always do a Google News Search. But here is the basic gist of life for his poor daughter Elisabeth while she was living in that hole:
Mrs [Christiane] Burkheiser repeated several words over and over again in the space of her hour-long outline of the crimes of Fritzl.
He would rape Elisabeth in the darkness and leave. ‘Lights off. Rape. Lights on. Mould. Damp. Leave.’
To give jurors an idea of the smallness of the cellar she pointed to the box they were seated in.
‘About 18 square metres, that was the size of the cellar. The size of the box you are seated in.’
‘I have been to the cellar twice,’ she told jurors as Fritzl stared ahead at Judge Andrea Humer, his back to the press and public.
‘It smells. It is incredibly damp. It has a morbid atmosphere that hits you as you crawl through the 83 square centimetre entrance hole.
‘The damp creeps in within minutes. There is wet rot. And he was the absolute ruler of this kingdom. He had complete control.
‘She had no washbasin, no bath, no shower, often no heat. He would come, switch the lights off, rape her, leave.
‘There was no fresh air. In those first years the air came through gaps in the walls. He used her like a toy. He came, he took her, he left.
‘He decided what would be eaten and what medicines would be available. These were aspirin and cough mixture.
‘Often the electricity would be switched off or there would be a power failure and she would be left in the dark, sometimes for hours, sometimes for ten days. There were no candles, no torches.
‘It was bitingly cold in winter, blisteringly hot in summer. She had to care for and feed babies here.
‘But worse than the rapes, worse than the food shortages, worse than the darkness, was always the uncertainty. How long would he be gone? How long would he stay when he returned?
‘Would he ever come back from his long holidays?
‘This uncertainty was the worst thing of all.’
Quite frankly, how her mother could have either be so incredibly blind and naive, or could have possibly turned a blind eye, is beyond anything I can imagine.
The trial continues through this week. Hopefully, there will finally be justice for Elisabeth, who only survived her ordeal because of incredible strength of character. I sincerely hope that she can finally have a chance at life.
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Finally.Justice for these folks.
Comment by Thomas Grow — March 17, 2009 @ 11:15 am
There is no punishment severe or harsh enough for this monstrosity. Evil is too light a word to describe his actions. I hope he suffers untold horrors in prison the likes of which we can’t even begin to imagine and then suffers even worse in hell for all eternity.
Comment by Dawn — March 17, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
No punishment would provide adequate justice for the crimes this man has committed. If this man spent every single minute of the rest of his few years on earth suffering the worst imaginable torture, it would not be adequate to punish him for his crimes.
When someone murders another person, certainly, the crime is unforgivable, and the suffering goes far beyond the victim to anyone who loved that person. But for the actual victim, his suffering is over.
But for this monster’s victim, the torture doesn’t end at this trial. The crimes of this man have caused lifelong suffering for this poor woman, first through the past 24 years of unimaginable physical/sexual/emotional torture, to the loss of the lives of her children, to the lifelong devastation this NIGHTMARE will undoubtedly cause her.
What kind of world is it that we live in that crimes like this can even take place? But to coddle this man and provide him with comfort and solace after what he has done? WTF????
God be with you, Elisabeth.
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Well said, Dawn.
I can’t even imagine a punishment sufficient to match his crimes. But with you, I believe his worst punishment will not be administered in this life, but the next.
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
I think my last post went into the spam folder…
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
And about Elisabeth’s mother… what exactly IS her story?
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
Her mother, from my perspective, belongs in the same level of hell the father will be spending eternity in. As a mother, there is NO way on earth I would be so unaware or unconcerned about the whereabouts of my children, grown or otherwise.
These two blights on humanity should be extracted from this world immediately. I can’t even begin to illustrate my contempt and hatred for anyone responsible for these types of crimes against ANYONE, let alone one’s own children.
It makes me question my faith, that’s how disturbing I find this tragedy.
Comment by D — March 17, 2009 @ 2:21 pm
Dawn ~
I so wholeheartedly agree with you… I am just not nearly as eloquent as you in expressing my disgust at these people. Thinking about the hell that was Elisabeth and her children’s world, I become physically ill.
I don’t even know what to say about where God is in all this. I know the popular perspective on God is that He is with us through everything, loving us, wanting us to come to Him, seek Him for our needs. I have no idea how to apply that thought process to this nightmare.
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
Sorry… D
Comment by glp — March 17, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
thomas-there will never be justice for those folks.
Comment by sally — March 17, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
He creeps me the hell out!
May he burn in hell.
Comment by egad! — March 17, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
I read the Daily Mail article and I agree with one commenter there- we don’t NEED a book detailing exactly what happened. It’s horrific enough just to think about.
Elizabeth is a brave, courageous woman. May the the rest of her life be filled with only blessings.
Comment by A Watcher — March 17, 2009 @ 4:30 pm
There is a just God and he made hell for people like that – hard to imagine that God doesn’t want to send anyone there – I sure as HELL do and I’m glad it’s there or else we would have no sense of justice to hang on to when earthly men fail us
hell is sometimes a conforting vision for me, at least, when this kind of stuff happens
Miscabbage will be there . . .
Comment by tiger — March 17, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
Thanks glp! I am not alone in my outrage as is evident in k’s post and the spot on comments. I know God has a plan, but sometimes you still have to wonder what the point was in making this woman and her children suffer so much.
Comment by D — March 17, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
Regarding the mother: I had read that she was/is a very trusting, naive, meek, easily subdued and cowed woman who was at Fritzl’s mercy. He apparently abused her as well. That could go a long way in explaining why she seemed to either not question or seemed to turn a blind eye. However…I would like to think that, as a mother and a woman with a brain, I would have definitely investigated the strange goings-on in the cellar. Fritzl took long vacations to places like Thailand…what was to stop her from going down there and taking a look around when he was gone, other than the abuser/abused dynamic?
I can see where she would initially believe that he daughter had run off and joined a cult, since Elisabeth had run off before (to escape sexual abuse by her father). But after the babies started showing up, I would think a brain would have kicked in. Plus before, she had to know that something wasn’t right between her husband and daughter. Plus, she let Fritzl come home AFTER he had spent time in jail, over a year, for raping a woman, and she told the kids he was on a business trip. Had she kicked him out then, would this have happened? In my mind she is just as guilty as Fritzl.
I hadn’t planned on this becoming a religious discussion; I don’t normally discuss religion, and I don’t plan on making any other statement other than this one, so here goes: I believe in a literal Heaven and a literal God, and I believe in a literal Devil (Lucifer, former angel) and a literal Hell. I believe that man has a free will; as such, often both God and the Devil get more credit than they deserve for things that happen in the world because someone exercised their free will.
See, barring some sort of debilitating mental illness, Fritzl chose to do what he did, and he chose to continue doing what he did, and he chose to hide what he did, out of his own free will.
I don’t pretend to know why this happened and just what role God did or did not play in it. I won’t even pretend to guess at an answer…because I don’t know. If others want to believe differently, I respect their right to do so. I do pray for Elisabeth and her children, that they will experience healing in their life and to be able to fully enjoy it. The littlest one is fascinated by the sunrise every morning; he fully appreciates the light because he knows what it is to live in darkness. How many of us can say the same?
Comment by k — March 17, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
[...] Source: k [...]
Pingback by Celebrity Blog | Babelogs | Celebrity Gossip » Blog Archive » Josef Fritzl Offered Counseling To Be Able To Cope With The Trauma Of His Trial — March 17, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
In this article, it is pointed out by Elisabeth’s older brother that “any attempt to interfere with what Fritzl wanted usually resulted in a beating.” Those who are abused live with this sort of threat; it could go a long way in explaining the mother’s mindset.
I would like to think I would risk it, though.
Comment by k — March 17, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Wow, the face of evil… knew about this horrible story, but I’d never seen pictures before! I do not understand why people believe God should step in save every single person on earth when life gets crappy. Maybe something out there created us, but we’ve got free will and we’ve got our own legal system, we start wars and end wars, and we are generally in control of ourselves. We are not the SIMS.
Comment by Brooke — March 17, 2009 @ 11:39 pm
I hope nobody is offended by my saying that this case has upset me more profoundly even than 9/11 – and I was living in NY at the time.
Really there is no reason to compare the two. But this story has brought humanity to a new low, and has truly shaken my faith like nothing else. I fluctuate between a spiritual and secular worldview – and I just cannot understand how anything so horrific can possibly exist in this world.
Was it physically possible for Elisabeth to kill herself? If it was, and she did not, then her will to live amazes me and gives some redemption to this Brothers Grimm nightmare.
Also horrifying to me is Fritzl’s lawyer. I understand that he is required to defend him by law – but this lawyer seems to have sold his soul to the devil. He genuinely argues that Fritzl was a caring father, in his own way – and that there is no proof of rape, only testimonials.
Now this is a person with a respectable profession, well-established in society. Does he really believe his own arguments?
I actually feel that I MYSELF need therapy after hearing about this. I’m serious – I considered setting up an appointment last year when the story first broke and this reminds me I should probably follow up on that. Or maybe I need to go talk to a Bishop or Rabbi.
Anyhow, I would send Fritzl to a supermax prison in the US if it were possible. More importantly I pray for miraculous healing for Elisabeth and all her children.
Comment by Eloise — March 18, 2009 @ 3:05 am
its people like this that make me wonder if some people really are born evil. i can only say one day forgiveness will not come and he will be abandoned into eternity.
Comment by farrah — March 18, 2009 @ 4:35 am
There are no words in any launguage that can describe this man. He is far darker and scarier than a monster. Wasted tax dollars providing him with counseling if you ask me. There’s no gain. By studying him science will never be able to anticipate this type of sickness and prevent it. There is no helping him. Let him fester in his guilt – if he really is capable of feeling guilt. No amount of counseling will ever repair the damage inflicted on his daughter and grandchildren. Her mother is a sick woman – she suspected and did nothing. She should be jailed too. Hopefully, Elizabeth and her children will leave the rest of their lives in relative peace.
Comment by Carly — March 22, 2009 @ 8:23 pm