Austrian 'dungeon' family given space to heal

The Austrian dungeon ordeal children and their mother are inching towards normal life in a spacious hospital wing, doctors said today.

Elisabeth Fritzl ,42, who has spent the last 24 years in a cramped cellar being repeatedly raped by her father, and two of her children who shared the tiny space with her, now have the entire wing to themselves.

They are being treated there along with another three of her children who were taken away at birth and raised normally by her 73-year-old father Josef.

“The young people have space to play, they can run around” said Dr Berthold Kepplinger from the clinic near the town of Amstetten.

“The members of the family talk a lot, they are very happy to be together.

“They enjoy the food especially,” he said, adding that yesterday the family had held an impromptu birthday party with a cake for the second-youngest, 12-year-old Alexander.

The eldest child Kerstin ,19, whose sudden illness led to the discovery of the scandal, was still seriously ill in another hospital on a ventilator.

Dr Keplinger said although all the others were relatively healthy “there is a difference between those who had a normal life and those who lived up to 24 years in this dungeon.”

“They have to get used to the daylight and space and room.”

Authorities are trying to decide the future of Kerstin and her two brothers, Felix and Stefan, aged five and 18, who effectively have no identities. Officials have discussed the possibility of providing new names for the children, who “never saw sunlight” until they were freed from the basement on Saturday.

Dr Kepplinger said Stefan could read and write in a “reduced form.”

He said Elisabeth had spoken “quite a lot” about what she went through in captivity, but he declined to provide details.

“It was definitely dreadful for her and for her children,” he said.

Meanwhile Fritzl is refusing to talk to police or explain further why he put his daughter and her children through such an ordeal.

Fritzl’s wife, who police still insist knew nothing of what was going on, has been allowed to visit Elisabeth and the children in hospital.

Since his initial confession on Monday, Fritzl has refused to talk to police.

Franz Polster, Lower Austria’s top criminal investigator, said one detail Fritzl had divulged was that the heavy steel door shutting the basement dungeon off from the outside world was operated by remote control.

Fritzl faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted on rape charges, the most grave of his alleged offences. However, prosecutors said they were investigating whether he can be charged with “murder through failure to act” in connection with the death of a seventh child whose body was incinerated. That is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Police today revealed they are also are looking into possible links between Fritzl and the murder of a young woman 22 years ago.

The bound body of Martina Posch was found on a shore of the Upper Austrian lake of Mondsee in November 1986. Fritzl’s wife owned part of an inn and camping ground on the other side of the lake at that time.

“We have found no sign” of a concrete link up to now, a police spokesman said.

But he added Fritzl would be asked for an alibi because he could have been in the area when 17-year-old Martina was killed.