Austria 'horror' father's past record overshadows inquiry
AMSTETTEN, Austria (AFP) — Austrian authorities investigated reports Friday that 'house of horrors' father Josef Fritzl had previous sex crime convictions as public outrage mounted over the incest abuse case.
A police file on Fritzl, 73, who police say has admitted keeping his daughter as a sex slave in a cramped dungeon for 24 years whilst she fathered seven of his children, revealed he had a previous sexual assault conviction, a regional newspaper reported.
In the cellar itself, investigators said that their work was proceeding only slowly and would likely take weeks.
Investigators had found there was not just one, but two heavy steel doors to the dungeon which could only be opened with a remote control device, chief investigator Franz Polzer said.
Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten said details of Fritzl's previous conviction -- and another for attempted rape -- had turned up in a police file in the archives of the Upper Austria region.
Authorities in neighbouring Lower Austria, where the case was uncovered last weekend, have claimed that they knew nothing about possible earlier convictions of Fritzl, 73.
But the newly discovered file allegedly covers the suspect's attempted rape of a 21-year-old woman in a forest near the city of Linz in September 1967 and the sexual assault on a 24-year-old woman in Linz a month later.
The documents have now been handed over to prosecutors in Lower Austria, the report said. Normally they would be locked away from the public eye for 50 years in accordance with Austrian law.
Prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek told Austrian television ORF that the convictions would not have any bearing on the new case because they had long been expunged from Fritzl's record, as laid down by Austrian law.
Fritzl "has the right to say his record is clean, because the crimes and his punishment for them took place so long ago," Sedlacek said.
Depending on the crime, a conviction in Austria can be expunged after five but no longer than 15 years, unless the crime carries a life sentence.
That meant that when Fritzl reported his daughter missing to the authorities 24 years ago and routine background checks were carried out, there was no trace of his previous convictions.
That was also the case when Fritzl, who impregnated his daughter seven times, applied to legally adopt three of the children.
He claimed Elisabeth had run away to join a religious sect and deposited them on his doorstep asking him to look after them.
Sedlacek said chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser was expected to interview the suspect for the first time in the middle of next week.
"Even if he's still refusing to make any comment about the allegations, a meeting is necessary for the prosecution to get a picture of the accused," Sedlacek said.
Public horror and outrage at the Fritzl case has triggered widespread debate over whether Austria's sentencing for sex crimes is too lenient.
The revelations have triggered calls for tougher sentences for rapists and paedophiles. And there have also been widespread demands for sex convictions to be held on a person's criminal record for much longer.
Justice Minister Maria Berger, a Social Democrat, insists that current sentencing -- "of up to 15 or 20 years, or life if the victim dies" -- was draconian enough.
She pointed out that under new draft legislation recently drawn up to afford greater protection to victims of sex criminals, the maximum time before a conviction is expunged had been extended from 15 to 30 years.
But Interior Minister Guenther Platter, a member of the conservative OeVP party which is the junior partner in the ruling coalition, called for tougher sentences and for convictions of serious sex crimes never to be wiped.
"Any punishment that falls even a single day short of a life sentence, in reality, makes a mockery of the victims," said Harald Vilimsky, spokesman for public safety policy in the right-wing FPOe Freedom Party.
The only response was "a true life sentence without any chance of parole," he said.
A former tenant in the Fritzl house has meanwhile told of a string of suspicious occurrences that might have led to the discovery of the secret dungeon much earlier.
Sepp Leitner, who lived for four years in a ground floor flat above the cellar in the 1990s, believes he unwittingly paid for the utility costs for the underground prison.
In a newspaper interview, Leitner also told how his dog barked whenever it went past the cellar door. And he said that food mysteriously went missing from his and other tenants' kitchens, probably stolen by Fritzl to feed his captives.
