Fritzl wanted kids with daughter
2008-05-08 14:01
Vienna - Austrian incest father Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and made her bear seven children, said he locked her up to protect her from outside vices, in comments published on Thursday.
Fritzl, 73, said he had grown up under Nazi rule which had an influence on him but he denied abusing daughter Elisabeth from the age of 11 as she has told police.
"She did not obey any rules, she hung around in dodgy bars all night, drank, smoked," Fritzl said of his daughter, who last week emerged from the underground bunker where she was kept with three of her children.
"That's why I had to provide, I had to create a place, in which I could keep Elisabeth away from the outside world, by force if I had to," he said in comments released by his lawyer to the weekly magazine News.
"I grew up under the Nazis, drills and discipline meant a lot at the time. I probably adopted some of this, unconsciously of course. But I'm no monster," he said, adding that he had agonised over whether to free her.
"My situation became crazier with every week that I held my daughter captive. I considered again and again whether I should let her go or not," he told his lawyer.
Fritzl denied the abuse had started when Elisabeth was 11. "That's not true. I'm not a guy who abuses young children," said Fritzl.
"It began later, much later. Not until she was 'downstairs,'" he added.
'It was my kingdom'
Fritzl has admitted to holding Elisabeth captive from the age of 18 in a windowless cellar in his building and sexually abusing her, police said.
He started furnishing the cellar "around 1981 or 1982", several years before he locked up his daughter and explained how this went unnoticed by his family.
"The cellar in my building belonged to me and me alone. It was my kingdom, that only I had access to. Everyone who lived there knew it," he said.
"Nobody would have dared to enter my kingdom or ask me what I was doing."
Fritzl also maintained that he always set a timer on the reinforced-concrete and electronically-coded doors to the cellar, so that they would open automatically if he did not reappear after a given time, a claim that is still being examined by experts.
The abuse became an addiction, Fritzl told his lawyer, who has said his client may plead diminished responsibility. "The truth was, I wanted children with Elisabeth."
"I was happy about the kids. It was nice for me to also have a real family in the cellar, with a wife and a couple of children."
A typical household
He described the dungeon - 55-square-metres with no fresh air or natural light - as a typical household.
"I watched action films with them (the children) on the VCR while Elisabeth cooked our favourite dishes. Then we all sat down at the kitchen table and ate together."
Fritzl said they celebrated Christmas and birthdays underground when he would sneak in Christmas trees, cakes and presents into the dungeon.
Elisabeth's third child was brought to live with her "grandparents" because she cried a lot and was often ill, Fritzl explained. Two other "problematic" siblings soon followed, while one died shortly after birth.
The other three remained incarcerated with their mother, spending their entire lives underground and never seeing sunlight until their release on April 26.
Elisabeth Fritzl sought to create a normal life for them however, teaching them to read and write thanks to books her father would bring her, reading them bedtime stories and baking cakes, according to News.
Letters written by the 18-year-old woman in 1984 and published on Thursday by the daily Oesterreich showed she had hoped to move away from her parents shortly before she was locked up.