Austria searches soul in sex dungeon aftermath

Police allege that Fritzl confessed to taking his daughter Elisabeth — now 42 — captive when she was 18, repeatedly raping her, fathering seven children with her and tossing into a furnace the body of one of their offspring after it died in infancy.

Authorities say DNA tests confirm Fritzl is the biological father of the six surviving children, three of whom he and his wife adopted and raised upstairs. The other three, along with Elisabeth, were held in the cell and never saw daylight until — aged 19, 18 and 5 — they finally gained their freedom last Saturday.

Trying to regain equilibrium
Amstetten, reflecting shock and shame felt across Austria, since has struggled to regain some kind of equilibrium.

In a poignant reflection of how life goes on, bulletin boards displayed wedding engagements, the local soccer club's scores and photos of firefighters burning a barn in a training exercise. Tacked to a door just around the corner from the Fritzls' gray concrete apartment complex, a gaily painted poster proclaimed: "Hip Hip Hooray! Stella Turns 4 Today!"

But the mood was somber on Amstetten's tidy main square, where clusters of candles laid on the cobblestones during an evening vigil held earlier this week still flickered amid a pool of sticky wax.

Resident Maria Scheuch said she's convinced that Austria's closed society — a time-honored mind your own business, live and let live approach — will simply have to change.

"We like to say we are so child-friendly. But we must ask ourselves how child-friendly we really are," she said.

Privacy is almost sacrosanct in Austria, where it's not unusual for families living on the same street for many years to have little or no contact beyond a curt greeting exchanged on the street.

'These things happen'
Witnesses since have come forward to claim they saw or heard unusual activity, such as Fritzl allegedly struggling under cover of darkness to bring large quantities of food and water into his home through a rear entrance.

Why, many Austrians now want to know, didn't they blow the whistle years ago?

"This could happen anywhere, but the country's image is taking a real hit. Everyone's saying: 'Austria, Land of Dungeons,'" said Karin Cwrtila. "After the Kampusch affair, we didn't think it could get worse."

Experts contend Fritzl may have been a criminal genius who simply outsmarted neighbors and police.

"To organize so many births, supply so many alibis and create an atmosphere where no one dared ask questions, he had to be very lucid and intelligent indeed," said Reinhard Haller, a leading Austrian psychologist.

Walter Wendl, an Amstetten native who spent nearly four decades living and working in Britain until he returned here in 2000, lashed out at Austria's critics in Belgium. That country is home to Marc Dutroux, the notorious serial pedophile sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for raping, imprisoning and killing young girls in a homemade dungeon.

"They should keep it shut!" he said Thursday. "These things happen. You can't blame all the people."

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