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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 0:20:52 GMT
Having been quite shocked by John Fowles "The Collector" this story only left me dumbstruck at human kind. <<shiver>> I read that book over 20 years ago and have forgotten all of it apart from the atmosphere. Likewise his book 'The Magus' did you read that? That ambience of fear is still with me too. He writes atmosphere horribly well.  |
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 0:22:58 GMT
I don't get the feeling that this has anything much to do with Austria. This is just a repeating weird human action, very weird.
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 0:27:07 GMT
I had friends who holidayed there (Austria) every year, for years, they loved the place and the people. Yet I know others who have found them very rude and standoffish (not to mention it being rather expensive!) Any "analysis" welcome though - I included this today because it was breaking news this morning and doesn't seem to have been carried anywhere much. Having been quite shocked by John Fowles "The Collector" this story only left me dumbstruck at human kind. Just why exactly? I've known children born to sisters, to their mothers and to their daughters. Nobody gives it a second thought and often arranges it with more planning than the SS put into their Ahnehrungsdeinst. It happens those children were not human. I take it the opposite way round, that instead of throwing our hands up in horror bewailing what has become of the human race it is what has become of the human race that brings this man and those like him (and some women) to prosecution for normal practice among animals. I don't understand what you're saying there, are you saying animals do this as normal behaviour? Breed with their offspring? But it's not normal to create this odd prisoner situation. Not even in the animal kingdom. There are different rules for different species but this case cannot be proffered as anything but grossly abnormal. The human instinct is to care for your child not take it as your love slave. |
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 0:34:25 GMT
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7947106.stmQuote:Bringing the cellar to life in court By Bethany Bell BBC News, St Poelten The court room in St Poelten is a light airy place, with wood panelling and a high, painted ceiling. It is a far cry from the cramped damp conditions in the cellar in Ybbsstrasse in Amstetten where the Fritzl family lived. I was one of around 100 journalists allowed into court. ... Once the jury was sworn in, the state prosecutor, Christiane Burkheiser, made her opening speech. "Have you ever wondered what it was like in the cellar?" she asked. Leaning over into the jury box, she went on to describe the damp, the water which streamed down the walls. At one point she handed out a cardboard box containing items belonging to the family in the cellar. Smell them, she told the jury. That is what it was like down there. She said Josef Fritzl had raped his daughter repeatedly - sometimes in front of their children. He looks like a nice old man from next door, she said, but he has shown no sign of remorse. Speaking for the defence, Rudolf Mayor appealed to the jury to see his client as a human being not as a monster. He said his client had shown concern for his children by taking them out of the cellar when they were sick. He asked the jury to put their emotions aside as they listened to the case. The judge then read out the charges and asked Mr Fritzl to plead guilty or not guilty. He admitted the charges of incest, coercion, deprivation of liberty and some of the charges of sexual abuse. But he said he was not guilty of the charges that carry the longest sentences: murder and enslavement. The judge then began to question Josef Fritzl again about his youth and career. He spoke a little about his difficult relationship with his mother. We had been in court for less than two hours when the judge decided that journalists and members of the public should leave. Over the next couple of days the jury will be watching the videotaped testimony of Josef Fritzl's daughter. It is likely to be a harrowing account.
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 18, 2009 0:35:37 GMT
We should separate the incest from the kidnap-rape. I don't find incest particularly bothering but I do find the rest of it uniquely human. Animals don't have the sexual repression we do, so they can't associate sex with something nasty, so they can't make something horrible out of it. If something had not deprived Fritzl of all normal animal sexuality he would not have been able to do this. It's only when sex becomes deprived of meaning as communication and seen as disgusting perversion that it can become disgusting perversion.
There are exceptional conditions that might be considered a sort of animal rape (I remember watching one) but it takes human shame at natural animal activity to produce real perversion. Fritzl at one time had a wife. What stopped him from finding another lover, like any other man? If he did not want a lover, what impelled him to use his daughter in a way that can't be confused with any kind of excessive (or possessive) love?
Did he think of sex as a need become shameful if it should be shared with any woman except his wife? Well, Freud was Austrian - and so was Hitler.
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 0:44:27 GMT
I suspect that you are trying to avoid the obvious - he had a biologically sexually mature girl over whom he could exert power, he believed she belonged to him, he believed he had some right to his behaviour.
You don't find incest a particular problem? Well, that might be a different thread. Incest might mean something else in a different context, 2 siblings in love with one another for example. This case, with its prison-like evidence, surely cannot separate incest from control and abuse.
I think its naive to refer to human sexuality as nothing more than animal acts. Even some animals, as Housesparrow had already pointed out, impose rules upon sexuality. It is quite a normal human thing to do.
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 18, 2009 1:31:05 GMT
That's what I don't get. Incest is no real problem because it's a social definition. Some define first cousin sex as incest and some don't. Some define half the tribe incestuous and the other half not. If immediate relatives choose something sexual, I can see how that harms broader social integratrion (apart from genetic problems) but it's not in itself something horrendous. After all, Creationists believe we are all products of incest (though Cain needed a mark to prevent other people from killing him and found a wife with them - who were these people if the Fundamentalists were correct?)
The Fritzl situation is quite different. It has no mitigating factors at all. Only human beings could have created it by making sex something dirty and shameful that he has to go creeping to his daughter for and lock her away to try and forget the shameful urge that overtook him instead of hiring a whore if sex is all he wanted, or learning to love another woman (but then could a man like that ever have loved his wife - and if not, why did she marry him?)
As you say, he had a sexually mature girl he could exert power over. But Power is nothing to do with Sex. Power is a human invention, Sex is natural animal behaviour. In fact I don't see that Power had anything to do with it except practicality of holding somebody avaliable. What we don't know is what made him see sex in that light when normal people do not. If he had thought of sex as a natural activity between equal animals then he would have behaved like an animal and found other women as ready to accept him as his wife. He thought of sex in a human way that makes it perversion that no animal could ever perpetrate.
Not even so-called 'perverts' (they really mean what Puritans call perverts) would sanction such an abuse of sexual communication - perhaps especially not them.
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 13:48:50 GMT
Fritzl has changed his plea to Guilty of all charges.
After seeing the video evidence given by his daughter Elisabeth he is beginning to confront his own evil.
For me, it is life affirming to know that he - even he - could not deny the wrong he has done. A little glimpse of humanity and remorse. A relief.
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 13:49:31 GMT
Piff, it was about control.
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 18, 2009 13:51:35 GMT
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but one thought that did strike me is this: Had the daughter died in the cellar and been disposed of, would we ever have known? How many other women are there out there right now tonight being held prisoner by a family member or other person and used for sexual gratification?
Do we really believe that Fritzl is a one-off, once in a lifetime monster? Because I don't think he is, and I see clear parallels with Fred West (to give just one example.)
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Post by motorist on Mar 18, 2009 13:53:24 GMT
You could well be right. The Magdalene Laundrettes went on for a long time before they were exposed in the 90s. And it was only a year or two ago Hooly escaped from Trub's cellar  |
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 14:01:44 GMT
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but one thought that did strike me is this: Had the daughter died in the cellar and been disposed of, would we ever have known? How many other women are there out there right now tonight being held prisoner by a family member or other person and used for sexual gratification? Do we really believe that Fritzl is a one-off, once in a lifetime monster? Because I don't think he is, and I see clear parallels with Fred West (to give just one example.) No, it's not a one off, it's a repeating story. This is a unique case though because of all the children. The girl who was taken to hospital that ended up exposing the horror, Kirsten, was 19 and she and the other children had never left the basement, never seen daylight. I think that's a one off. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2009 14:12:23 GMT
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but one thought that did strike me is this: Had the daughter died in the cellar and been disposed of, would we ever have known? How many other women are there out there right now tonight being held prisoner by a family member or other person and used for sexual gratification? Do we really believe that Fritzl is a one-off, once in a lifetime monster? Because I don't think he is, and I see clear parallels with Fred West (to give just one example.) No, it's not a one off, it's a repeating story. This is a unique case though because of all the children. The girl who was taken to hospital that ended up exposing the horror, Kirsten, was 19 and she and the other children had never left the basement, never seen daylight. I think that's a one off. Some of the children did though because he and his wife were looking after them . His wife ...........who isn't talking ............which I think is VERY telling . She is IMO heavily involved . |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 18, 2009 14:26:47 GMT
No, it's not a one off, it's a repeating story. This is a unique case though because of all the children. The girl who was taken to hospital that ended up exposing the horror, Kirsten, was 19 and she and the other children had never left the basement, never seen daylight. I think that's a one off. Some of the children did though because he and his wife were looking after them . His wife ...........who isn't talking ............which I think is VERY telling . She is IMO heavily involved . You do have to wonder, don't you ARF? Fritzl took some of his children 'upstairs' and presented them to his wife for her to raise . . . I mean, I know we women are weak and feeble and not great at the thinking, but you'd think maybe some alarm bells would have been ringing? |
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Post by Patrick on Mar 18, 2009 14:28:22 GMT
Some of the children did though because he and his wife were looking after them . His wife ...........who isn't talking ............which I think is VERY telling . She is IMO heavily involved . I was wondering about that - surely she's "bound" to appear by association alone? |
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Post by Flatypus on Mar 18, 2009 15:42:23 GMT
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but one thought that did strike me is this: Had the daughter died in the cellar and been disposed of, would we ever have known? How many other women are there out there right now tonight being held prisoner by a family member or other person and used for sexual gratification? Do we really believe that Fritzl is a one-off, once in a lifetime monster? Because I don't think he is, and I see clear parallels with Fred West (to give just one example.) What about that Belgian bloke a few years ago kidnapping little girls? At a lower level of girls particularly just disappearing to be familiy slaves, or sometimes of necessity to look after incompetent mothers (whether drugs or misfortune) it's probably far higher than accounted for. There was nothing hidden about the existence of Magdalene Launderies though. Well into the 1980s it required only a parent's and doctor's agreement to commit a juvenile to a mental home as well. I didn't realise that Fritzl's wife was still alive. I assumed that all this happened because she'd died. That puts a completely different complexion on it. She may have done a deal to avoid prosecution by spilling the beans. All the same (was it Trubs?) is probably right that where he is seen as a monster, she will elicit sympathy as only a weak woman so afraid to act or easily deluded or any other stupid sexist excuse. I wouldn't be sure whether admitting full guilt means anything more than saving time on formalities. I'd expect him to be found insane and committed to a secure hospital because at his age he's going to need hospitalisation soon anyway. Austria's a Catholic country so no doubt coming to terms with his sins and reflecting on them is good for his immortal soul and a few centuries less of it in Purgatory. I can actually see the reaasoning behind this but the general case all depends on an absolute definition of sin - and in the Roman Church's case, I don't find some of their definitions impressive. Where the hell they will find a priest with the temerity to decide his sins are forgiven is a mystery to me. But Popes have done worse. I wonder how many personal priests as corrupt as themselves refused their Absolution and left them expecting Hell? |
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Post by trubble on Mar 18, 2009 17:33:10 GMT
No, it wasn't me, I haven't said anything about Mrs Fritzl anywhere, I think.
If I have said anything anywhere it was probably along the lines of noting the hatred spilled out onto her as if she had comitted the crime herself because that is what I observe in horrible cases where a man and woman are involved.
The Moors murders, for example. Over the years I have heard so much more about how wicked she was than he was, even though she surely wasn't. I suppose this was because it was so unusual to have a woman involved, it's usually men.
It's usually power and control. The men seek out partners to control too, I guess.
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Post by housesparrow on Mar 18, 2009 17:44:22 GMT
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade, but one thought that did strike me is this: Had the daughter died in the cellar and been disposed of, would we ever have known? How many other women are there out there right now tonight being held prisoner by a family member or other person and used for sexual gratification? Do we really believe that Fritzl is a one-off, once in a lifetime monster? Because I don't think he is, and I see clear parallels with Fred West (to give just one example.) The difference, perhaps, is that Fritzl did not kill his daughter and most of their children. He took one to hospital, then allowed his daughter to visit. It was this simple act of compassion that exposed him, as he must have known it would. |
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Post by jean on Mar 18, 2009 17:50:46 GMT
If he had thought of sex as a natural activity between equal animals then he would have behaved like an animal and found other women as ready to accept him as his wife. He found plenty on his sex tours to Thailand, apparently. |
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 18, 2009 17:52:20 GMT
If he had thought of sex as a natural activity between equal animals then he would have behaved like an animal and found other women as ready to accept him as his wife. He found plenty on his sex tours to Thailand, apparently. Sex tours. Creepy. |
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