How Does Something Like This Even Happen?
The evil that men are capable of still surprises me at times:
Authorities in Austria are trying to piece together the details of how a 73-year-old man managed to keep his daughter imprisoned in a windowless cellar for 24 years while he repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.
Police said the 42-year-old woman, identified only as Elisabeth F, told them her father, Josef, had lured her into the basement of the block where the family lived in Amstetten, north-west Austria, on August 24 1984, and allegedly drugged and handcuffed her before locking her up in the dungeon. A police spokesman said she was “psychologically extremely disturbed”, but her version of events was “completely believable”.
The father was in custody last night.
She said she had been abused by him from the age of 11. “In her own words, she was continuously abused by her father,” the spokesman said. She said she had borne seven children by her father, including twins, one of whom died in 1996 after just three days. The father removed the body from the cellar and burnt it.
This goes beyond just fallen nature. Sometimes, when I read these things, I simply can’t imagine what other vile forces are at work. I’ve seen people afflicted with demons (I used to do some work for an exorcist) and even they did not do these kinds of things.
It’s a bracing thought to see such malignancy lurking beneath the surface of our civilization, and to know that it can go undetected for so long.
Filed under: Principalities and Powers
He was just being true to himself and following his dreams.
This is why I will never be able to turn entirely against capital punishment. Some men are strictly a pleasure to hang, to quote “Lonesome Dove.”
You worked for an exorcist - what was that like? What did people afflicted do?
Danby - with that comment, you have attained the paradigmatic height of “wry”.
Dale - I’d say I agree, but I’m not convinced that non-fatal crimes should receive capital punishment. If there were a case for it though, this would be it.
North - I should clarify: not an exorcist per se, but a priest given the faculties of exorcism because of some individuals he was dealing with.
As for what that was like? Let’s just say I didn’t sleep for at least a month. It was less dramatic than film depictions, but scarier because it was real. That said, it was much like you might expect - desecration of religious objects, revulsion at sacramentals, manifestation of entities through voices and languages not possessed by the subject, prolific blasphemy (even in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament), etc.
For a good clinical look at such cases, check out this article at New Oxford Review.
“… I’m not convinced that non-fatal crimes should receive capital punishment.”
I’m against capital punishment, but if I were for it, I’d be for it in this instance.
There is simply no reason to differentiate between fatal crimes and non-fatal crimes for heinous acts of this sort. Besides, I fail to see how the acts of this monster are any less culpable or shocking to the conscience than if he were to have taken the lives of this woman and her children - he certainly took 24 years (over half) of his daughter’s life. In fact, this sort of extended torture and forced captivity over a period of 2-and-a-half decades might be argued to be a fate worse than death.
I grew up in Texas and we have a saying down there (alluded to by Dale in his mention of Lonesome Dove): “Some folks just need killin’.” This monster is one of them.
Jay,
I’m not opposed to capital punishment. I don’t have enough confidence in our justice or prison systems to believe that the sort of containment that John Paul II envisioned is possible. People are killed or assaulted in prison all the time - guards and prisoners alike. Some of the worst offenders should never have the chance.
That said, the compelling argument I’ve heard against capital punishment for crimes like rape is that it gives the rapist no incentive to leave his victim alive. If the penalty is the same regardless of whether he kills the victim, killing the victim becomes incentivized - there is no one to identify the perpetrator.
This story has upset me all week. This is not the kind of news story you want to follow when you are pregnant, btw. This poor woman and her kids…. The fact that her father’s name is Josef just seems like some kind of cosmic joke, too. Let’s all pray the girl who is fighting for her life survives and that the mother and her children find healing.
As for the death penalty, I am totally confused. Feel free to throw your arguments at me, either way.
God bless, Maureen
Steve,
The argument that something like rape, or especially in a case like this prolonged torture of ones own child, should not result in their execution because it would encourage them to kill seems to fall short. How many rape today because they know how minimal the sentences usually are, and a great many of them do kill, either out of perversion or fear of being identified. Today with the kind of forensics killing someone is not the best way to hide what was done. Let justice be done and end the most malicious that prey on others.