Cellar children coping well

THE Austrian children locked in a cellar with their mother since birth have been through an experience that is hard to imagine.

But experts say the psychological damage they have suffered could be less severe than first thought.

The two boys — aged 18 and five — and their 42-year-old mother Elisabeth are said to be receiving medical and psychological treatment.

Ernst Berger, the psychologist who worked with Natascha Kampusch — who was abducted at the age of 10 and held in a cellar in Austria for eight years until 2006 — said Elisabeth and her children could be suffering from a variety of traumas.

He said they would need extensive counselling if they were ever to have a chance of regaining normal lives.

Professor Jay Belsky, an expert in the field of child development and family studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, says the fact that the children were with their mother — a source of security — and with each other, could have mitigated the amount of trauma they suffered.

“If there were books, games and a TV, there were things for all the children to make a psychological life around. It need not be as atrocious as it might first appear,” he said.