Paparazzi harass Fritzl family

2008-05-17 15:52

Vienna - A photographer was caught trying to scale a wall up to the psychiatric ward in Austria where a woman has been recovering from an ordeal as a sex slave, press reports said on Saturday.

The daily newspaper Oesterreich quoted the victim's lawyer as saying the man had late on Thursday tried to reach the balcony of the ward where Elisabeth Fritzl and five of her children are in care.

The family is currently being shielded from the media glare and is receiving psychiatric counselling in a clinic in the town of Amstetten.

But Attorney Christoph Herbst was quoted as saying paparazzi had been increasingly harassing the family to get pictures.

According to police Fritzl, 42, was kept as a sex slave for 24 years by her father, now in custody. She and her six children - allegedly by the father - were freed last month from a cramped, windowless dungeon in the basement of the father's house.

It was the hospitalisation of the eldest child, 19-year-old Kerstin, last month that brought the case to light.

The Saturday newspaper reported also charged that a staff member at the hospital where the victims are being tended had secretly taken an unauthorised picture of one of them and tried unsuccessfully to sell it to the press for €300 000.

The newspaper also quoted hospital staff as saying the family had started to make discreet sorties outside their ward to get fresh air, sometimes disguised so that they would not be recognised.

The mother, for example, had gone for walks in the park disguised as a nurse.

The youngest, aged five, who was never let out of the dungeon since his birth, had gone into town and fulfilled his dream of eating at a fast-food restaurant.

The clinic management could not be reached Saturday for confirmation of the press report details.

The director Berthold Kepplinger has repeatedly said there must be strict respect for their privacy for the victims to be able to reconstruct their lives.

- AFP