I know this isn’t really celeb or entertainment news, but the title of this article caught my eye.  It talks about how the trial of Austria’s Josef Fritzl is so traumatic for him that he is being offered counseling to deal with this horrible experience:

The self-confessed incest rapist is being held at St Poelten prison, next to the court, and its vice president Erich Huber-Gunstofer said his most famous incumbent was being offered psychiatric support.

“He is being offered psychiatric care to help him through the ordeal of the trial,” he said.

“He can watch television because he has access to TV in the communal areas and he can also read the daily newspapers.

“He has told us that he doesn’t want to exercise in the yard during the trial but he can do afterwards if he wants to.

“He has two people to protect him at all times. They don’t discuss the trial with him but we are offering him therapists and he does share a cell with two other inmates.

“There is no special treatment for Josef F.”

OH no, no special treatment for him…other than the fact that he’s being offered therapy for the stress of the trial, which is more than he offered his own daughter for the stress of being raped over 3000 times while living in a dark, cold, damp basement for 24 years.  And certainly no therapy for her during that horrific time, while she was going through the worst experiences of her life, just oversized sex toys and the fact that he was considerate enough (I really hope you see that as the sarcastic remark it is) to add on another room to the dungeon so he wouldn’t have to rape her in front of her children.  What a guy.

I’m not going to go into all the details of his horrific crimes…suffice it to say they are legion.  If you’re really interested, you can always do a Google News Search.  But here is the basic gist of life for his poor daughter Elizabeth while she was living in that hole:

Mrs [Christiane] Burkheiser repeated several words over and over again in the space of her hour-long outline of the crimes of Fritzl.

He would rape Elisabeth in the darkness and leave. ‘Lights off. Rape. Lights on. Mould. Damp. Leave.’

To give jurors an idea of the smallness of the cellar she pointed to the box they were seated in.

‘About 18 square metres, that was the size of the cellar. The size of the box you are seated in.’

‘I have been to the cellar twice,’ she told jurors as Fritzl stared ahead at Judge Andrea Humer, his back to the press and public.

‘It smells. It is incredibly damp. It has a morbid atmosphere that hits you as you crawl through the 83 square centimetre entrance hole.

‘The damp creeps in within minutes. There is wet rot. And he was the absolute ruler of this kingdom. He had complete control.

‘She had no washbasin, no bath, no shower, often no heat. He would come, switch the lights off, rape her, leave.

‘There was no fresh air. In those first years the air came through gaps in the walls. He used her like a toy. He came, he took her, he left.

‘He decided what would be eaten and what medicines would be available. These were aspirin and cough mixture.

‘Often the electricity would be switched off or there would be a power failure and she would be left in the dark, sometimes for hours, sometimes for ten days. There were no candles, no torches.

‘It was bitingly cold in winter, blisteringly hot in summer. She had to care for and feed babies here.

‘But worse than the rapes, worse than the food shortages, worse than the darkness, was always the uncertainty. How long would he be gone? How long would he stay when he returned?

‘Would he ever come back from his long holidays?

‘This uncertainty was the worst thing of all.’

Quite frankly, how her mother could have either be so incredibly blind and naive, or could have possibly turned a blind eye, is beyond anything I can imagine.

The trial continues through this week.  Hopefully, there will finally be justice for Elizabeth, who only survived her ordeal because of incredible strength of character.  I sincerely hope that she can finally have a chance at life.

Source: k