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Incest victims scarred for life
07/05/2008 09:04 - (SA)
Simon Morgan
Vienna - The victims of the Austrian incest case will carry the scars of their ordeal for the rest of their lives, according to experts, although doctors say the family has already made progress since their release.
"Processing what has happened will take years," said one psychologist, Gerald Kral.
Two of the children, a 19-year-old girl and her 18-year-old brother, would "probably never recover even after years of therapy," a German paediatrician, Ulrich Fegeler, said.
Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, bore seven children with her father Josef Fritzl during 24 years of sexual abuse in a windowless bunker beneath the family home in Amstetten, east Austria.
Three of her children were held alongside her, living all their life underground, never even seeing natural daylight.
One died soon after birth and the other three were raised by Fritzl and his 68-year-old wife as their "grandchildren" in the house upstairs, unaware of the fate of their siblings underground.
Boy 'a real charmer'
"They remain in a very extreme and difficult situation," said Berthold Kepplinger, doctor at the Amstetten-Mauer psychiatric clinic where Elisabeth Fritzl, her mother and five of her children are recovering.
"The fresh air, the light and the balanced diet are doing them good," he said, adding that the youngest child, a five-year-old boy, "is growing livelier by the day. He's a real charmer, funny and sociable".
He insisted however: "We're still in the earliest possible phase of therapy."
The eldest child, Kerstin, 19, is still fighting for her life in intensive care, where she has been placed in an artificially-induced coma and on a life-support machine.
She was admitted to hospital on April 19 suffering multiple organ failure - possibly as a result of her life-long incarceration, according to doctors - triggering the events which led to the discovery of one of the most shocking cases of domestic abuse.
"The danger to her life is no longer acute, even if it remains very serious," doctor Albert Reiter said on Monday, adding that the doctors pledged to provide the optimal amount of care "so that Kerstin can totally recover" at least physically.
Pace of therapy
Each of the victims will need to come to terms with their ordeal at their own individual pace, noted Kepplinger.
"It will be up to the family themselves to determine the exact pace of their therapy. We're not going to push them into any fixed, prescribed course of treatment."
A specialist for post-traumatic conditions, Brigitte Lueger-Schuster, said the victims will initially experience a sort of "honeymoon period" and only begin to process their ordeal later "bit by bit".
Giving the victims time is of paramount importance, a spokesperson for the victims' support group "Neustart", Andreas Zembaty, added. "There's no quick patent remedy."
Psychological effects
Max Friedrich, a psychiatrist who counselled Natascha Kampusch who was also imprisoned and sexually abused for over eight years until her escape in August 2006, has estimated the family could need "five to eight years" of therapy.
Physiologically, the victims suffered a lack of vitamin D from the absence of natural daylight and possible motor deficiencies resulting from growing up in such cramped conditions.
But the psychological effects could be even worse, argued Fegeler.
Even the three children who lived upstairs with Fritzl would face problems, said Paulus Hochgatterer, a child psychologist coordinating the team of experts looking after family.
"The man who provided for them, the father figure, has been arrested and is now suddenly the perpetrator," Hochgatterer said.
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