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Austria plans image campaign after incest horror
Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said on Wednesday the government planned to launch an image campaign to restore its reputation abroad after an incest case that shocked the world.
The plight of Elisabeth Fritzl, whose 73-year old father Josef sexually abused her and kept her in a windowless basement for 24 years has put the eastern Austrian town of Amstetten in the international media spotlight.
“It’s not Austria that is the perpetrator. This is an unfathomable criminal case, but also an isolated case,” Gusenbauer said in his first public reaction.
“We won’t allow the whole country to be held hostage by one man,” he told journalists in Vienna.
The case has sent shockwaves through Austria less than two years after an Austrian teenager, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from the basement where she had been locked up by an abductor for eight years.
Gusenbauer said the government planned to hire consultants to get the campaign under way and would use “all technical and professional means available to rectify” Austria’s image.
Meanwhile, investigators said they were now painstakingly trying to reconstruct the life of Fritzl, who had seven children with his daughter.
DNA tests have confirmed 73-year-old Josef Fritzl was the father of all six of his daughter’s surviving children and prosecutors are probing him for rape, incest, coercion and the death of the seventh child, whose remains he burnt in a furnace.
“Now the DNA tests prove he is both the father and grandfather of the children, we must reconstruct his entire life, piece by piece,” Franz Prucher, head of security in Lower Austria told Reuters.
“Who did he meet, where did he shop, where did he go? We have 24 years to cover,” Prucher said, adding further details would be given at a news conference later on Wednesday.
Amstetten officials say they do not blame local authorities for failing to discover the case earlier and say those who allowed Fritzl and his wife to care for three of Elisabeth’s children acted within the law.
“CUNNING AND AUTHORITARIAN”
Austrian and German media reports say Fritzl went on holiday alone in Thailand and Cyprus and have shown a picture of him in bathing shorts. Officials say Fritzl could have stored food in the cellar and left his hidden family alone for weeks.
Described by police as “authoritarian” and “cunning”, Fritzl lured his daughter Elisabeth into the cellar of their home in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her, according to a statement by his now 42-year-old daughter.
Three of Elisabeth’s surviving children, a daughter aged 19 and two sons aged 18 and 5, had also been locked up in the cellar with her since birth and had never seen daylight.
Fritzl’s family have had an “astonishing” reunion, a medical official said on Tuesday. The three other children — two girls and one boy — were raised by Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, who themselves had had seven children.
After appearing before a judge on Tuesday, Fritzl is now in investigative custody, a period of 14 days after which he must go to court again for his detention to be extended.
“In my opinion it is without doubt he will be detained for longer. The incest case is very clear, Prucher said.
If found guilty of murder through neglect of the child that died, prosecutors say Fritzl could face 10-15 years in jail or even a life sentence.
However his defense lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said although the DNA test proved incest, evidence was needed for other allegations.
“The DNA traces are clear and this would prove the incest but the rape has not been proven at all, let alone the enslavement and the murder that have been talked about. Nothing has been proven there,” he told broadcaster ORF.
Photographs of the cellar show a narrow passage leading to rooms that included a cooking area, with children’s drawings on the walls, a sleeping area and a small bathroom with a shower.
A official for the Amstetten mayor’s office told Reuters on Wednesday an inspection of the cellar for fire safety took place in 1999 but the hideout went undiscovered. Source: Reuters
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