Teen daughter of Austria’s incest victim “stabilised”

Vienna — Further gruesome details in Austria’s "house of horrors" incest case came to light Sunday as the condition of one of the victims was described as having stabilised.

Kerstin, 19, the daughter of Elisabeth Fritzl who was held captive and repeatedly by her father for 24 years, resulting in her giving birth to seven of his children, remained in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Amstetten, a spokesman said.

She has been in an artificially induced coma for the last two weeks and is on a ventilation machine.

Her life-threatening illness had led to the release on April 24 of her mother and two of her siblings from the basement cellar under 73- year-old Josef Fritzl’s home in the small east Austrian town.

Kerstin and her siblings spent their lives along with their mother in the cramped space underneath the house.

Meanwhile, the chief of the police in Lower Austria, Frantz Polzer, gave additional details of the case on Sunday.

He said the now 42-year-old Elisabeth had been lured into the cellar by her father in August 1984, handcuffed and tied to a pillar and tied with a leash to prevent her from escaping for months afterwards.

The leash was long enough to allow her to use the bathroom, he said.

The case, described as one of Austria’s grisliest crimes, has shocked the nation and made headlines abroad. Fritzl’s lawyer Rudolf Mayer has meanwhile recommended that his client be locked away in a psychiatric facility, in comments to Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

Police received anonymous information last week that Elisabeth, accompanied by her father, was to visit her daughter in a local hospital where the 19-year-old had been admitted.

Elisabeth then gave details of the years she spent in the cellar while her father told relatives she had run off to join a cult, leaving three children on his doorstep over the years. One of the seven children she had by him died in infancy.

DPA