Our minds have reeled in recent weeks as the details of 73 year old Austrian Josef Fritzl's double life of incest has come to light. The crimes he committed against his daughter are grotesque: locking her up in a tiny, windowless, stuffy, soundproof dungeon for 24 years; beating and raping her thousands of times; denying her medical and dental treatment; and causing her to bear 7 children in the dungeon, one of whom he threw in an incinerator after he died. These horrors shock and anger us. How could someone treat his own daughter so horribly? Why did he do this?

When reading all the news sources about this case, one is compelled to conclude that Josef Fritzl's crimes are really not such a surprise at all. He has spoken frankly to the media about his own thinking regarding his daughter, and about his own childhood. His statements show that the seeds of heartless criminality were sown when this now elderly man was a young child.

Josef was an only child, whose mother threw his father out of the house when he was 4 years old. He was beaten to the point of bruises nearly every day by his mother. He says his father was a "waster" who cheated on his mother. When he left, Josef says he became sort of a "husband" to his mother, and that he was in "awe" of her. The picture we are left of young Josef is a child who is loses his father, is alone with a woman who beats him daily, and who is placed in an inappropriate role of "husband". There is nobody for Josef to turn to - no sibling, no kind father, only a brute of a mother he dared not offend. He has no helping witness* to offer comfort, and to show him another way of treating children. His fear and anger towards his father for leaving him, and towards his hostile mother turn inward and seethe inside him. He longs for revenge: to control, hurt, and humiliate others, since he cannot do so to his parents.

When Josef grows into adulthood he marries a submissive young girl of 17 - he is 21. His wife, Rosemarie, begins to take the brunt of his internal rage as he beats and humiliates her in various ways. He now has a victim at his disposal, yet Rosemarie sometimes manages to avoid the abuse and at one point leaves him for 9 years. Even so, she stays married to him even after he is convicted of rape and has made numerous visits to prostitutes. The prostitutes and rape victim are humiliated and abused in further expressions of Josef's repressed feelings of revenge.

Josef and Rosemarie have 7 children. Josef uses a classic method of gaining control over them: "divide and conquer". Three of the children he "likes" and treats decently, and 3 others are disliked and treated poorly. The seventh child is Elisabeth. Josef has said she reminded him of his mother, that she even looked like his mother. Poor Elisabeth! From a young age she received more beatings than the other children: punching and slapping for "every little thing" according to a friend. When she was 11 he began another form of humiliation, control and abuse: raping her in the woods and the cellar.

When Elisabeth was a teenager Josef sent her to a cooking school. During those years she ran away twice, desperate to get away from his abuse. Both times she was found and forced to move back home. At 18 she made plans to move in with a sister. Shortly before she was to move Josef asked for her help in moving a heavy door in the cellar - she helped him and then Josef pushed her inside the door into the dungeon that she wouldn't escape for 24 years! That act of humiliation was not enough for Josef: he repeatedly beat her and raped her in the one room dungeon for 9 years, even in front of the children she bore from the rapes. He further humiliated and controlled her by giving her the choice of starving or giving in to rape, and by threatening to gas or electrocute her and the children. He also abused her by forcing her into a "mothering" role toward him, making her cook his favorite dishes for him.

More room was needed for the children and Josef humiliated Elisabeth further by forcing her to scrape out more space in the cellar, with her bare hands. 15 more years were spent in the slightly bigger dungeon while the rapes and beatings continued, and more children were born. Again Josef's desire for control took the form of "divide and conquer": he took 3 of Elisabeth's babies away from her. He secretly humiliated his wife by getting her to care for his babies of incest, born just below her own house.

Throughout the ghastly revelations of this story, Josef's ideas and actions have reminded me again and again, like an eery echo, of the type of thinking exhibited by babywhipping authors such as Dobson, Michael Pearl, and Tedd Tripp. Josef demanded total, immediate obedience, enforced by repeated corporal punishment - the same is true of babywhippers. Josef was very concerned about outward appearances - babywhippers are the same. Josef claimed he was saving Elisabeth from a worse fate and bad influences (!) - likewise, babywhippers claim hitting a child saves them from something even worse ("I had to hit him to keep him from running in front of semis" - don't you wonder about some child-hitters' claims of incredibly stupid disobedience and ear-splitting tantrums and how smacking solves everything??)

Josef  believed he had the right to abject submission from his children even if he was wrong - babywhippers say the same. Josef withheld food as punishment - so do babywhippers. Josef believed he was a decent parent - so do babywhippers. Josef valued politeness and orderliness over compassion and compromise - so do babywhippers. Josef confined Elisabeth - so do babywhippers (sitting on them, keeping them in their rooms, tying them up, not allowing them outside friends). Josef twisted the parent/child relationship around so that his daughter served *his* needs (love/sex/mothering) - the same is true of babywhippers who seem to value what a child can do for *them* more than anything else.  

Over one dozen books are currently published in the US that recommend hitting infants, even with objects. And their philosophy of child-raising is hauntingly similar to Josef Fritzl's. Above all, the child is seen as someone to control, to force into total submission by threats and beatings. The child is controlled in order to serve the parent's needs, be they for chores, convenience, for the love, attention and respect they never got from their own parents, or as an object for expressing revenge on their own parents.

I believe revenge and the craving for "respect" are the main reasons that beating and humiliating children continue at such a high rate, and to such extreme degrees as with Josef Fritzl. The desire for revenge for the suffering one endured at the hands of one's own parents is a far greater force than most people realize or acknowledge. If a child is isolated with only an abusive parent, as Josef was, there is no way out from the suffering other than to stuff the mountains of anger inside and then look for available victims later, on whom to seek revenge. This is what Josef did. Absolute control and humiliation are the underlying games at play. The inner child within the adult body is driven to endlessly seek to fulfill its needs, needs that no amount of control or humiliation or revenge can ever completely satisfy. A trail of victims is left in the wake of the adult whose childhood wounds were never recognized.

We know from vast amounts of research that children who are hit are more likely than non-hit children to become aggressive toward others, for the rest of their lives. Research also shows that hitting children is linked to sexual problems later in life, such as coercing someone into having intercourse, and participating in risky sex without birth control. We need to act on this knowledge. We need to provide better laws to protect children from being hit, and more encouragement to parents to raise their children with gentleness, kindness, affection and positive attention, as opposed to harsh punishments.

A child's emotional life is desperately important. We must realize this, deeply, profoundly, as a society. For if a child is abused and nobody offers him/her comfort, if nobody offers him/her an escape or a better way of treating children, then we will continue to produce more Josef Fritzls. Children need to have their hurts acknowledged if they are to remain human and not become sociopathic monsters. Remember this: when you know a child is being abused, show that child you care! You may be able to stop someone from becoming a "cellar monster", and you may save another Elisabeth from being tortured some day.

* Helping witness - a term coined by psychoanalyst and author Alice Miller, for a person in an abused child's life who shows the child sympathy

Media sources:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10507872
http://www.joseffritzl.cn/
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=cellar-wife-why-i-didn-t-leave-him&method=full&objectid=20414293&siteid=93463-name_page.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=565616&in_page_id=1770
http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=71269
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3897695.ece
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2008/05/11/exclusive-dungeon-girl-elisabeth-fritzl-first-words-revealed-98487-20413922/  
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=55215&sectionid=3510212
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2008/05/11/josef-fritzl-i-m-worried-how-kids-are-coping-without-me-98487-20413920/
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iBlDSe6LQNKe01RSQao7XyIYMORA
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1105_fritzl.shtml
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/05/12/cops-to-quiz-cellar-beast-josef-fritzl-s-wife-again-89520-20415046/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/a-fathers-despicable-obsession/2008/05/09/1210131264454.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1141009.ece
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=762975
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/world/europe/09dungeon.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4818339&page=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/josef_fritzl/1944615/Josef-Fritzl-Fritzel's-cellar-lacked-oxygen.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/confessions-from-the-cellar-it-was-great-for-me-to-have-a-second-proper-family-in-the-cellar-with-a-wife-and-a-few-children-824588.html
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=564753&in_page_id=1811
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/08/joseffritzl.austria
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23668001-5012749,00.html  
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/05/fritzl-the-evil.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1141009.ece
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/confessions-from-the-cellar-it-was-great-for-me-to-have-a-second-proper-family-in-the-cellar-with-a-wife-and-a-few-children-824588.html
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/06/express/amstetten-notes-on-a-catastrophe
http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2008/06/2188

Research
http://www.stoptherod.net/research.htm
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/lw28spanking.cfm

It's funny that way, you can get used
To the tears and the pain
What a child will believe
You never loved me

You can't hurt me now
I got away from you, I never thought I would
You can't make me cry, you once had the power
I never felt so good about myself

Oh Father you never wanted to live that way
You never wanted to hurt me
Why am I running away

Maybe someday
When I look back I'll be able to say
You didn't mean to be cruel
Somebody hurt you too

"Oh Father" by Louise Ritchie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN6LfKkvY5c