QUOTE
Gottfried Wagner, 80, is alleged to have beaten and tortured the mentally ill girls in the kitchen of their home in Braunau, the town where Adolf Hitler was born.
The shocking case brings back horrific memories for Austria, where Josef Fritzl raped and imprisoned his daughter for 24 years.
Wagner, known to friends as Friedl, is said to have beaten his daughters with sticks and threatened them with a pitchfork when they displeased him.
It is not known if either of the women was ever made pregnant.
Police say they lived in fear, were treated as slaves and forced to sleep on a large wooden shelf in the kitchen. His wife, who he also allegedly raped and abused, died in 2008 but the attacks on the daughters continued until May this year when the eldest decided to fight back.
After he again tried to rape her, she struck her father and he fell heavily. He was unable to get up and the women, now aged 53 and 45, ignored his pleas for help for two days.
The women did have some contact with a social worker over the years because of their mental health issues but they were always too frightened to reveal what was happening to them.
But in May they eventually called the local authority which sent in a social worker who in turn called police after the daughters finally broke their silence. An Upper Austria Police spokesman said: “The accused repeatedly threatened to kill them and threatened them with weapons.”
Police said he refused them virtually all social contact with the outside world and rarely let them out of his sight.
He was allegedly in possession of two weapons, thought to be shotguns, and police say he routinely threatened to kill his children if they tried to escape.
Police chief Alois Lissl said: “They were evidently locked up in their own house, and hardly ventured out into the open.
“They received some outside care but were evidently so intimidated that they kept quiet about these acts their entire life.”
Although there were numerous rooms in his house they were confined to the kitchen. Despite being arrested the pensioner remains in a local elderly care home where he is undergoing treatment for injuries he received in his alleged last rape attempt.
The town mayor said he was “devastated” to know such things had gone on and pledged an investigation.
The case is yet another shock for Austria. In 2006 a young girl, Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped eight and-a-half years earlier by maniac Wolfgang Priklopil, finally escaped his cellar lair near Vienna.
He killed himself shortly afterwards.
Then in 2008 the world was horrified at the Fritzl case when it emerged he walled his daughter Elisabeth up when she was 18 in a secret cellar beneath the family home in Amstetten.
He raped her for 24 years and she bore him seven children, six of whom survive and live with her. Fritzl is now incarcerated in Austria’s most secure jail for psychiatric prisoners.
http://whitewatch.info/2011/08/25/white-ma...r-41-years.aspx
The shocking case brings back horrific memories for Austria, where Josef Fritzl raped and imprisoned his daughter for 24 years.
Wagner, known to friends as Friedl, is said to have beaten his daughters with sticks and threatened them with a pitchfork when they displeased him.
It is not known if either of the women was ever made pregnant.
Police say they lived in fear, were treated as slaves and forced to sleep on a large wooden shelf in the kitchen. His wife, who he also allegedly raped and abused, died in 2008 but the attacks on the daughters continued until May this year when the eldest decided to fight back.
After he again tried to rape her, she struck her father and he fell heavily. He was unable to get up and the women, now aged 53 and 45, ignored his pleas for help for two days.
The women did have some contact with a social worker over the years because of their mental health issues but they were always too frightened to reveal what was happening to them.
But in May they eventually called the local authority which sent in a social worker who in turn called police after the daughters finally broke their silence. An Upper Austria Police spokesman said: “The accused repeatedly threatened to kill them and threatened them with weapons.”
Police said he refused them virtually all social contact with the outside world and rarely let them out of his sight.
He was allegedly in possession of two weapons, thought to be shotguns, and police say he routinely threatened to kill his children if they tried to escape.
Police chief Alois Lissl said: “They were evidently locked up in their own house, and hardly ventured out into the open.
“They received some outside care but were evidently so intimidated that they kept quiet about these acts their entire life.”
Although there were numerous rooms in his house they were confined to the kitchen. Despite being arrested the pensioner remains in a local elderly care home where he is undergoing treatment for injuries he received in his alleged last rape attempt.
The town mayor said he was “devastated” to know such things had gone on and pledged an investigation.
The case is yet another shock for Austria. In 2006 a young girl, Natascha Kampusch, kidnapped eight and-a-half years earlier by maniac Wolfgang Priklopil, finally escaped his cellar lair near Vienna.
He killed himself shortly afterwards.
Then in 2008 the world was horrified at the Fritzl case when it emerged he walled his daughter Elisabeth up when she was 18 in a secret cellar beneath the family home in Amstetten.
He raped her for 24 years and she bore him seven children, six of whom survive and live with her. Fritzl is now incarcerated in Austria’s most secure jail for psychiatric prisoners.
http://whitewatch.info/2011/08/25/white-ma...r-41-years.aspx
