Read the full text of Josef Fritzl's statement

Josef Fritzl described yesterday his “beautiful idea” of having a second, secret family with his daughter, whom he kept imprisoned for 24 years in the cellar and with whom he fathered seven children. In time, he said, his daughter Elisabeth, now 42, became “just as good a housewife and mother” as his wife Rosemarie upstairs.

The tangled confession came in notes supplied to his defence lawyer, Rupert Mayer, and was supposed to nudge public opinion in his favour. He was no monster, insisted the 73-year-old Austrian engineer, but a prisoner himself — a prisoner of his desires.

Mr Fritzl admits locking up his daughter in his dungeon — “my kingdom, that only I can enter” — on August 28, 1984. Throughout that hot summer and the following winter Mr Fritzl says he resisted the urge to sexually assault the girl. His aim was to bring her under his control. Elisabeth, he said, was a wild girl, constantly partying and mixing with a bad crowd. “I grew up in the Nazi times and that meant the need to be controlled and respect authority,” he said.

Commentary: a society that nurtures secrets

What society would accept the probability of three children being left on the doorstep of Josef F and grant him adoption?

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• Pictures: house of horror

Background

• Why are child abuse scandals happening in Austria?

• Analysis: damage caused may never be healed

• Austria: sedate town is stunned by news

• Police search other Fritzl properties in Austria

Related Links

• Why he did it: Joseph Fritzl's statement

• Fritzl 'began building cellar in 1978'

• Fritzl 'insanity plea' to dodge prison

Late one night in 1985 he lost his own sense of control and went downstairs. “At some stage somewhere in the night I went into the cellar and laid her down on the bed and had sex with her.” She had only cried quietly, making small whimpering noises. “I knew that Elisabeth didn’t want it, what I did with her. The pressure to do the forbidden thing was just too big to withstand.” Every two or three days he went into the cellar to bring her food and a change of clothes. Each time, he had sex with her. “It was an obsession with me,” he said.

Mr Fritzl’s notes, published in News magazine in Vienna, contradict the testimony given by Elisabeth. She told police that her father had been sexually abusing her since the age of 11 and that she had been raped by him soon after she was put in the cellar. According to her version, she was initially handcuffed, then kept on a dog lead. “That was not necessary, my daughter had no chance to get away anyway,” Mr Fritzl said.

He denied having sex with her at the age of 11. “That is not true. I am not a man who would molest children. I only had sex with her later, much later.” He said that had always had a drive to have sex with his relatives and that he also wanted to be a patriarch, to have a large family of children.

He paid macabre tribute to his mother: “My mama was a strict woman. She taught me discipline, order and diligence. She was the best woman in the world — and I was her husband in some way. She was the boss at home, but I was the only man in the house.” That relationship apparently initiated fantasies about having sex with her.

After leaving home he had several affairs before meeting his wife, Rosemarie. “She was much more shy and weaker than my mother,” he said. “I also wanted to have many children. Not children that would have to grow up alone, like I did, but children that would always have someone to play with.”

With Rosemarie, now 68, he had seven children, including Elisabeth. Even though he admits to raping a woman in 1967, during his marriage, he emphasised, “I always loved her [Rosmarie] and I will always love her.” He admitted he did not use contraception while assaulting his daughter. “In reality, I wanted to have children with her,” he said. “I was looking forward to the offspring. It was a beautiful idea for me, to have a proper family also down in the cellar.”

Elisabeth became pregnant four years after the start of her imprisonment. “Elisabeth was, of course, very worried about the future, but I bought her medical books in the cellar so that she would know what to do when the day came.” She gave birth to a girl who, now 19, is critically ill in a hospital. A year later a boy was born.

In 1992 a girl was born with a heart defect and Mr Fritzl decided to bring her upstairs so that she could have proper medical attention. Other sickly children were also taken upstairs.

Mr Fritzl tries to present himself as a caring father. He seems to be trying to construct a complex defence in which his lawyer will argue that he is mentally sick, but a caring person.

“I always knew during the whole 24 years that what I was doing was not right and that I must be crazy to be doing something like this. But it just became a matter of course that I lived my second life in the cellar.”

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