And apropos of nothing

[pegkerr]

I think the Fritzl case is just about the sickest thing I've seen in the news since just about . . . well, ever.

Those poor kids.

Comments

[mjryan.livejournal.com]

I just can't wrap my mind around it. The facts of the case are so horrible and bizarre and unbelievable. It's just disgusting what that man did to that woman and children. I try to imagine being the unsuspecting wife...I just can't imagine any of it. What possesses someone to do that? And, to keep up the charade for 24 years?

[rachet.livejournal.com]

It makes me wonder if he abused the children, too.

It's such a weird situation.

The mother finding out her daughter was RIGHT THERE the whole time.

The children finding out their mother was RIGHT THERE the whole time.

The children finding out their father is their grandfather, too.

The man is sick. Beyond words sick.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

It's like something out of a horror movie. Terrible, awful.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

We don't yet know if the wife really didn't know. I don't see how she didn't.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

It seems like such an unrealistic and impossible situation- I just can't believe that NO ONE knew for 24 years.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The authorities don't believe she did. The room was soundproofed, and the father forced the daughter to write letters claiming she had run away from home and not to look for her.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

my thoughts exactly. From what I can gather from here and there (and I HAVEN'T been following it that closely) there were at least three people, possibly four, living in that basement, at least two of whom were young adults in their very late teens or early twenties. These people had to move, to speak, to make a noise - and unless the basement was a concrete bunker once used to torture prisoners of the Third Reich and therefore completely sound proofed there had to have been SOME evidence that All Was Not Right Downstairs. Also, these people needed to eat (which assumes a certain budgetary cost of food) and I don't think that adding four more invisible people to the household food budget without anyone (read: the wife) noticing is remotely plausible. Who did the shopping? The 73-year-old partirach? I doubt it. And if the wife did, didn't she ever question - not ONCE, in twenty four fricking years?!? - the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of certain items she knew she had bought for the household?

If he was the primary abuser, the wife was an accomplice. They did not live in a castle, they lived in an ordinary suburban home, and there is no way that a prisoner could be kept in such a house - not even one, let alone four - without the other people in the house having SOME sort of inkling. If they were terrorised into silence, that's one thing. But to claim ignorance... that just doesn't wash.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The father bought all the food, and I'll bet he handled all the money, too. The room was soundproofed (he was a retired electrician and presumably knowledgeable about house construction). He was apparently extremely authoritarian and forbid the family to go into the basement, and they did not dare disobey them. The searchers said they never would have found the room without being shown where it was.

At this point, I believe the mother didn't know.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

In addition, the father told his prisoners that the basement space was wired with explosives. I presume the threat cowed them from trying to rush him when he opened the door or from making too much noise.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

In addition, the father told his prisoners that the basement space was wired with explosives. I presume the threat cowed them from trying to rush him when he opened the door or from making too much noise.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

The whole country (Austria) seems to be asking themselves that agonizing question.

[(Anonymous)]

Or from a novel... like Flowers in the Attic!

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

Or like a novel... such as Flowers in the Attic!

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I read it in the Strib this morning before leaving work. My heart goes out to all of them: the wife and her children, the daughter and her children. I can't begin to imagine the degree of traumatization that will need to be unraveled and healed.

And I have no problem believing that such a thing could happen. It's the classic abusive household dynamic, taken to an extreme. People are conditioned and terrorized and broken so that they DARE NOT question or challenge the abuser. It's just hideous. And so hard for me not to wish all kinds of horrendous, torturous (and I do mean torturous) retribution upon that creep. I shall, instead, focus healing thoughts on the ones he harmed.

[enegim.livejournal.com]

It is...truly horrendous.

I can't help thinking of Alice Miller's work, particularly Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child and For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. The latter book focuses on German and Austrian pedagogy, esp. in the nineteenth century, and how this created the culture that enabled National Socialism among other things. (I hope I'm not invoking Godwin's Law here!)

I've read that people were furious at Miller for suggesting that the abusive system was a cultural problem rather than a matter of one Evil Man and his followers, but it always made sense to me. And of course, even if things have changed since then, the father is of just the right age to have been brought up under the old system.