On the Fritzl

As more details emerge on the sordid life of Fritzl, we might have some inkling of the reasons, but they don't diminish his crimes, the need for justice, and the safety of the community. Putting this guy in a small cell for the rest of his life would be poetic justice. And he's confessed to more crimes. Will anything be done about those, I wonder?

"I was born to rape," he is reported to have told the psychiatrist. "Bearing that in mind I controlled myself for quite a long time." He added: "I could have behaved a lot worse.."

Fritzl locked up his daughter, Elisabeth (42), for 24 years in a purpose-built cellar and fathered seven children by her, of whom one died shortly after being born and three lived with him and his wife in his house upstairs.

He said he had deliberately never looked his daughter in the face while he was raping her. Fritzl admitted that he often punished his "dungeon family" for rebellious behaviour by turning off the light or letting them go hungry for several days. He also taunted the children with photographs of other children playing outside in the sun to "show them there was another world".

Kastner said his sexual behaviour and his need to dominate women was his way of "compensating for the defencelessness and humiliation he felt as a child".

Shortly after puberty Fritzl began sexually attacking girls, and at the age of 32 he broke into the flat of a nurse and raped her at knifepoint.

He was said to have a thin grasp of the gravity of his crime, after expressing a belief that he would spend his final days with his wife and pleading for a short prison sentence so that he could continue running his property business to enable him to provide for his family.

Related Link: Born to rape?