By now everyone knows about the astounding case of incest, etc. in Austria. No doubt some are going to excuse Josef Fritzl by suggesting that he must be a mad man. Others (for instance here) will find fault with society.
These rationalisations are because for regular people the immensity of the crimes are blinding. But there are enough clues already that what Fritzl is is a psychopath and as such is responsible for his actions.
Take one small detail – the alleged role of drugs in the case.
Franz Polzer, the Austrian police chief leading the investigation, said Fritzl had given the impression, during protracted interrogations, that after 24 years he now actually believed the web of lies he had constructed to keep his incest a secret from his own family, the police and the public.
“Fritzl insisted that he chose Elisabeth as his favourite daughter, built the bunker just for her and felt that he had to lock her up because he was frightened that she was about to become involved with drugs.”
The reality was quite different. When his daughter was 18, Fritzl lured her into the elaborate cellar which he had built under his home during the Cold War in the late 1970s with the help of a government grant available for constructing domestic shelters against nuclear fall-out.
Police said he drugged his daughter with ether and handcuffed her to a wall in the cellar. During the first years he is alleged to have “kept her like an animal”.
Isn’t this classic? The kernel of truth is something to do with drugs, but see the evil inversion of the lie: he was trying to save her from drugs when in fact he used drugs against her.
(I wonder what thoughts readers have about Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, who police say was wholly ignorant of the matter. Asked why Mrs F was not being investigated, Colonel Polzer replied: “Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?”)
thanks so much, I was just about to post the link…Honestly, I would not be surprized if his wife was convinced that everything he was saying to her was “true”…They are skillful liars and manipulators…I cannot get just one thing…24 years of lying…I cannot imagine how can you keep that “fake mask” for 24 years without cracks?
unbelievable!
anyway I am also posting a link to yet another psychopath here…I still remember all those TV news when he got caught…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo
“Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?”
Well, if she also lacks in empathy and remorse, than I’m sure it would be possible. It’s absurd that she never noticed her husband going downstairs and moving a concrete wall to feed the daughter everyday and the wife never noticed anything strange.
It’s also possible that he manipulated her not to be suspicious, as it happens to every victim of a perverse. But how come for so many years!!!
Another thing that is strange about this case is the fact that it seems that the daughter and the children never tried to escape.
It’s funny how reality can mix with fantasy. We will never know exactly how the minds of these sick people work.
“Let me ask you a counter question: would any wife accept such a thing if she knew about it?”
Oh, probably loads of reasons. Some we can maybe understand, some we cannot. One, she might have been just as messed-up as he was and allowing him to act it out for her.
For my parents, they let it all happen in front of their eyes, they let my brother beat me, knock me unconscious, break my wrist, leave big blood clots in the back of my head from bashing it repeatedly against a bed post, chase me with guns, knives and the dog leash for a whip, verbally abuse me, jump off the porch three steps onto my back, punch me in the skull and knock me out, shoot at me with bb guns and more.
And when I swore at my brother for it, my father came over and slapped me across the face — FOR SWEARING.
I kicked him square in the privates for that, too. Something just snapped in me, right then, at all of 13 years old. I knew I did not deserve to be slapped for swearing at someone who was regularly assaulting me.
They accepted these things for any number of reasons. One, they were afraid of my brother, themselves. Two, they were in deep denial — the happy family they envisioned when adopting us probably did NOT involve one kid beating the shit out of the other one on a weekly basis. Three, they were ashamed to do anything about it, because it would mean ‘airing dirty laundry’ AND admitting that we were not picture perfect.
I don’t think they knew about the sexual abuse, though. That might have just pushed them over the edge, so I kept my mouth shut. Knew even as a pre-teen that their souls could not handle such knowledge – that it might honestly kill them to know.
These things, these little ‘acceptances’ don’t happen like the reveals do, or the eventual police involvement, where the rest of the world “finds out”. The latter happens all at one moment and is shocking.
The internal family unit buildup to a place where the father or another family member is molesting and/or physically assaulting the child is a slow, subtle process. It requires stealth actions on the part of the abuser. He must first systemically break-down every other family member’s potential objection or refusal.
This my brother did through intimidation of my parents and me. Through capriciousness, through boundary-crossing, lies and denial. Ambient abuse.
Once he realized he was free to do as he wanted, then the real fun began for him. He not only had power and control over me, but he held our parents in his sway. Master of the house.
It is all gradual, just as our experiences with P’s is gradual. If they did what they wanted to do right from the start, without first breaking down our defenses, not a single one of us would have stuck around.
She knew.
Where was her daughter?
hmmm….you don’t report a missing person for years?????
Please.
She knew, she knew—she sacrificed her….a family member did the same thing. Save the locked cell.
Maybe she was terrifed of him, but there is NO WAY she did not know.
well…sure enough police officer told the reporters that “He appeared to be emotionless about what he did”
yep, what a surprise god damn
Orphan,
Sounds like your “happy family” was about like my mother’s growing up—her brother choked her unconscious from birth to age 7 on a regular basis, and HER MOTHER KNEW but would not either stop it herself or TELL HIS FATHER, now get this, “because if his dad knew he would whip him and he might run away”—DUH! Well, when my mom was 7 and her brother 14 her dad did find out an whomped the crap out of his son and guess what, THE PHYSICAL ABUSE STOPPED.
My mother was a “don’t take no crap off anyone” person until her mother died, then she did a 180 and became the “family peacemaker”—at ANY PRICE OF COURSE AND YOU (not she) pays the price.
When my grandmother died, when my kids were very young, that was whem my mom started the ENABLING big time.
Orphan, I am so SO VERY SORRY that you had to endure such horrible abuse as a child and that your adoptive parents did not protect you from such a MONSTER sib. It speaks volumes about why it is difficult for you to set boundaries, but believe me (((hugs)))) YOU CAN TEACH YOURSELF TO DO SO. You are no longer that powerless child, you are now a POWERFUL ADULT, and you just have to BELIEVE THAT.
One of the animal training things that I use is that when I train a pair of oxen, I start when they are tiny, when I can make them do anything because I am just about bigger, much smarter, and convince them I am “god” and that they are WEAK and I am STRONG. When they weigh 2000 pounds and I weight–well, never mind what I weigh, it is less than they do LOL—they still think I am “god” and that they CANNOT resist me. They WILL NEVER EVEN TRY to resist me because when they were babies I taught them that they could NEVER SUCCEED in resisting me, so when they are HUGE, and could with a flickk of their heads kill me, if I were to BEAT them, they would hunker down and take it wihtout any resistence. (Of course I don’t beat them) But if I did, they would not resist.
Actually it is a big “power trip” to get beside 4,000 pounds of big steers (oxen) and with a switch in your hand not as big as a fly swatter (and it is for cueing not beating) go off down the road IN TOTAL CONTROL. Essentially they have Stockholm syndrome, but it is why they pull wagons for us and our ancestors and we don’t pull them for them. LOL
You had that “powerlessness” beaten into you as a child by the P-sib, and your parents whose duty DUTY it was to protect you did not, so you got lots of messages, that you were weak, powerless, worthless and should feel guilty because you were no good and that you were not allowed to set boundaries…hey, this is great if you are an oxen bound for a life of servitude in front of a wagon or plow, but for a human being it is pretty miserable—BUT YOU CAN REVOLT, YOU CAN STAND UP, YOU CAN REBEL AGAINST THESE ENSLAVING THOUGHTS—-throw off the chains my friend! ((BIG HUGS)
On this case of EXTREME abuse, I think in a way that this kind of extreme psychopath (and of course we have NO doubt what he is) in a way is counterproductive to teaching “normal” people what ANY psychopath does NOT have to go to this extreme to “qualify” as a psychopath.
Others will see HIM as some “poor victim” of some mental illness. Yes, his crime was terrible, but poor dear, he was mentally deranged so should not be held accountable.
As far as his wife “knowing” or “not knowing”–she probably saw RED FLAGS (like we all did) and ignored them. I h ave no doubt that Josef abused her as well in a thousand ways as well as his daughter.
Yes, he is a MEGA-MONSTER, with…aren’t they ALL? They just abuse in different ways, to different extents—but ALL abuse others.
My sentiments exactly OxDrover… the world associates the term ‘psychopath’ with extreme cases like Hannibal Lector and Josef Fritzl. I have followed the Fritzl story very closely and although you and I and all the lovefraud readers have a deeper understanding of psychopathy than the average person, I am so deeply saddened. The cruelty of this man is beyond my mind.
We all know that psychopathy, as with all mental or personality disorders, has varying degrees of severity. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being what we consider normal and 10 being the extreme, if Hannibal’s actions depict 10, Fritzl is surely at something like 42. He is OFF THE CHARTS!!! This has to be the most extreme case of human behaviour ever and there really are no words to describe the horror of what these fellow human beings (the family) have been subjected to for such a long period of time, albeit some of them have known no other way, and of how this mans mind was working!! His life-history explains so much about his behaviour but DOES NOT excuse him in ANY way for the extremity of this crime. He is NOT insane. An insane person would not have been able to maintain the lie for that long.
What the world does NOT know is that the MAJORITY of psychopths exist and operate on that sliding scale between 4-8 … they are not quite bad enough to be convicted of any crime but certainly bad enough to cause serious emotional and mental damage on a personal level, as we have all experienced.
The work of this website is a perfect medium to shed some light on an eerie, sinister and largely unspoken aspect of human nature… until something like this arises. I encourage you all to send an email to everyone in your address book suggesting they visit lovefraud.com for a facinating insight into the Fritzl-type personality. The world’s eyes are on this case right now and people want to know WHAT possessed him to act out with such horrendous cruelty. Some ‘sound’ education for those who are in abusive relationships, but just don’t know WHAT they are facing will, I’m sure find lovefraud a godsend.
Knowledge is POWER
Power brings SELF-RESPECT
Self-respect brings HEALING
Buzzibee,
You know you compare the Fritzl thing which took place over a couple of decades of continued abuse, and the one where the P just killed the 3 small children of his and his x-wife’s “to punish her” after he was granted unsupervised visitation—which is “worse?” They are both so HORRIBLE THAT even we have trouble getting our “heads around it.” We believe it, we know it is possible, and yet….it makes me so incredibly sad.
I find it almost impossible to believe that Fritzl’s wife didn’t know something was up, and yet, she was as much a victim as her daughter. How many of us have ignored RED FLAGS—All of us? How many have had Stockholm Syndrome? Many of us.
What is even more frustrating to me is the courts who don’t “get it” and the psychologists who are so arrogant about their own ability that they let the Ps sucker them too. The judges who make “snap” judgments without taking into consideration the CHILDREN’s rights to safety. I can only hope that in the end this is SOOOOOOO HORRIBLE that the murder of those children sparks a thing like the “amber alerts” that have saved so many lives that it is no longer national news when a life is saved by the Amber Alerts.
We all know the “better safe than sorry” rule and it seems that even on the OFF chance that someone may be harmful to the chldren at least, the VERY least supervised visitation by someone shoUld be MANDATORY–MANDATED BY LAW, so the judges don’t have discression like this.
I am frustrated too with the “criminal justice” system that is going to turn my Trojan Horse P back out on the street. This has been a stressful week for me, frustrating, and along with the horror stories as well, a bit overwhelming for me.