Posted on 04/30/2008 2:41:19 PM PDT by PROCON
The Austrian children kept in a cellar for their entire lives speak their own language using animalistic noises rather than words. Stefan Fritzl, 18, and his brother Felix, five, learned to talk by watching a television in the dungeon where they were held with their mother Elisabeth Fritzl, 42. But their form of communciation is only partly intelligible to Austrian police officers.
Police chief Leopold Etz, 50, who has met the two boys, said: “It is only half true that they can speak. They communicate with noises that are a mixture of growling and cooing.
“If they want to say something so others understand them as well they have to focus and really concentrate which seems to be extremely exhausting for them.
“Felix prefers to crawl but he can walk upright if he wants.”
Dr Berthold Kepplinger, who examined the brothers at a neuropsychiatric clinic near their home town of Amstetten, said: “They communicate between each other but this is far from a normal way of expressing oneself.
“Their mother taught them to read and write a bit but Elisabeth had lost much of her childhood knowledge after her imprisonment from the age of 18.
“They had no books and the main source of education was the television.”
When he was rescued Felix pointed to the moon, which he was seeing for the first time, and said: “Is that God up there?”
He then made excited gurgling noises when he saw a cow.
Doctors said that since he emerged from his prison he is constantly excited and keeps trying to hit the air with his hand.
When he saw the sun for the first time he was even more excited than when he discovered the moon.
He made a squeaking noise and tried to look directly at the sun. When he realised he couldn’t he kept covering his face with his hand.
When police took him in a lift at the hospital he was petrified and clung on to his mother as the floor moved.
Police said he was stunned when one officers started talking into a mobile phone.
Felix was also excited about the police officer's mobile phones. He was stunned by the ring tones and even more when one of the policemen used his mobile phone to talk.
The youngster also often hums an unknown tune to himself which police believe his mother used to get him to sleep.
Stefan and Felix’s sister Kerstin, 19, became ill in the dungeon and is in a coma.
All three have weakened immune systems, are suffering from vitamin D deficiency and are anaemic.
None of them had ever been seen by a doctor or a dentist and Kerstin has already lost most of her teeth.
The low ceilings in their prison left them all with cramped physical posture.
Elisabeth has aged so much she looks like a sister to her mother Rosemarie, 68.
Austrian psychotherapist and university professor Rotraud Perner said: “A lot will depend on what the children have been told, whether the mother explained to them their life in captivity.
“They may have created their own illusory world. However, a normal life could be possible for them.”
The children will need to wear sun-block cream as their skin gets used to sunlight.
Even more unbelievable is the fact that first degree murder in Austria carries a maximum sentence of 20 years! The only bright spot is that age 73, the 15 years will probably be a life sentence.
An austrian father locked his daughter (and several children as a result of their incest) in a basement complex for 20 or so years.
He raised 3 of the offspring above ground in the house above.
Probably the most horrific crime I have ever heard of.
I find it extremely difficult to believe this monster's wife did not suspect anything. Unless she, too, was abused by this control freak, a la Hedda Nussbaum. Also, the nice Austrians sentence murderers to only 20 years. The father is also now under investigation for an unsolved murder near property he owned.
Prayers for all the innocent children.
I know the 19 yr old is sick and that’s how they were found but what’s the detail of that, anyone? Did someone call 911? did the 19 yr old say they were in a dungeon before she fell into a coma?
” Are there other factors - physical abuse, brain damage, etc?”
You mean, besides the same man being the father and grandfather?
He let her out to go to the hospital. Her mother slipped a note in her pocket and the EMS found it.
She fell sick and he took her to a hospital. Even she said she was surprised he took her to a hospital, but she fell into a coma at the hospital. They haven’t said why she was sick, but they had never been to a doctor (hell, they never saw sunlight). But the mother (daughter) put a note in the girl’s pocket and doctors found it.
“Are there other factors - physical abuse, brain damage, etc?”
That’s what I’m thinking too. It sounds like mom tried to teach her kids language and reading. But I wonder, after so many years in their hole, if she just gave up?? (And not blaming the mom in any way). Also, if all there is to do is eat, sleep, go potty and watch TV, how much language does one really need?
I can’t imagine the horror.
The quote that got me was when the little boy looked up at the moon and asked “Is that God?”
Obviously it was not all grunts, and that he had learned about God somehow. And mom must have taken good care of them to survive that long in such terrible conditions.
wonder if she is diabetic since she’s already lost most of her teeth at 19.
True, but this man is responsible for one dead baby, ruining the life of his own daughter, and horribly damaging at least three kids, probably damaging the lives of the other three kids whom he adopted and shattering the life of his wife.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re all sinners and all of us deserve punishment of some kind, but this is just unbelievable. I just can’t get over how much suffering this one man caused.
And what would have happened if he had died? Would his daughter and those poor kids have starved to death in their prison, their plight unknown to the world? This is just horrible all around.
Apparently so since the tenant in the building ignored the knocking and seeing the man wheelbarrow food to the back of the house for 14 years.
One has to take the Christian view here. Pray for this mother and these children. They have been resurrected. They can see light, they can breath, THEY ARE FREE. The monster that imprisoned them is a DEAD man, he always was. When he no longer resides in this life, he will have eternal life in a place prepared for him called HELL. God did not bring this mother and her children up from their torture and their hell to experience more of the same. Good will come to they that have suffered at the hands of this Satanic monster.
That’s what I thought too!
This is when I question my own Christian beliefs that a man can utter an I’m sorry and get eternity in heaven.
“And this animal can only get 15 years?”
This is Europe. Murderers get only five or ten years.
What this guy did should be a capital offense.
You misunderstand. No words, no utterance will get anyone to Heaven. It is that which is in our heart that will determine our eternal disposition. I do believe there will be murderers in Heaven, that is the greatness of our Father. He is capable of a Forgiveness which is unfathomable to those of us who are his creations. But I can say with as much certainty as I am capable of, that the monster who is the main character in this story will have no words nor change of heart that can keep him from the Eternal residence known here in the temporal as HELL.
Not some man, her own father. She had 7 children by him in that dungeon.
There aren’t even words for this level of depravity and evil. Only a just and righteous God can serve up the appropriate penalty for a sick, twisted, demonic piece of human offal like this S.O.B. Reading this story made me physically ill, and that takes some doing.
Oh sweet mercy. May the Lord keep and bless the mother and the childre, I can’t say what I want to happen to the monster that sired them all.
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