elisabethJosef Fritzl, who locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and repeatedly raped her, goes on trial on Monday facing a life jail term to put the seal on his international notoriety.

Josef Fritzl’s resistance finally broke yesterday after he came face to face at his trial with the daughter who suffered 24 years of rape and depravity in his secret dungeon.

For 24 years the daughter of Josef Fritzland three of the children she bore him lived an isolated life in three tiny underground chambers, deprived of natural light and room to move around freely. Her ordeal shakes our belief that humans can be so brutal & barbaric.

Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, 69, had reported the 18-year-old Elisabeth missing in 1984, saying she had joined a sect.
But she was locked up in a cold, cramped cellar in the family’s apartment building where she was regularly raped and gave birth to seven children in the bunker.

Three children were brought to live with their grandparents while the other three spent their entire lives in the dungeon, never seeing daylight until their release last year. The seventh baby died shortly after birth. The dungeon, which Fritzl gradually expanded to 40 square meters, with three rooms and a small kitchen and bathroom area, had no hot water, heating, sunlight or fresh air.

In October 1983, she ran away with a friend to Vienna because she could no longer handle the abuse. She was found by police and returned to her father for her last months of freedom. She said that she wanted to move away from home and enjoy all the normal things teenage girls wanted. But, she said, her life was stolen by her own flesh and blood and she was to become the personal breeding machine of her twisted father.

He physically attacked her constantly. She told how he covered her mouth and prevented her from breathing. Although the prosecution says he did not speak to her for years, Elisabeth said he did, in fact, make threats such as: ‘If you do not do as I say, your treatment will get worse – and in any case you cannot escape out of the cellar.’

Finally the restraints were removed because they impeded Fritzl’s sexual assaults. Elisabeth told how the lights would go off, he would come in, rape her, and leave. At first she resisted but then realized resistance would only end in more physical abuse. So she stopped resisting.

The rapes averaged out to one every three days, but there were occasions – such as when he was on holiday in Thailand – when there were none, and some when he raped her more than once a day. She told of ‘constant beatings and kicking all over my body’.

Later, after 1989, he would come to the cellar armed with boxes of lurid pornographic videos which he would play while ordering Elisabeth to mimic the actors. She also spoke of sex toys being used upon her in violent sessions lasting many hours that left her with grave internal injuries. She received no medical care.

When the children were born Fritzl would turn off the lights to rape her. The children were just feet away and had to sit and listen to his grunts and moans while Elisabeth stopped herself from crying out for fear he would either beat her or them.

Fritzl has commited a horrendous crime beyond belief!!!

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