Click to play videoAmstetten, Austria: 73-year-old Joseph Fritzl started sexually abusing his daughter Elizabeth when she was just 11 years old and rapes began soon after.
He planted a note from Elizabeth, saying she had left voluntarily and they should not search for her.
By the age of 18, Elizabeth had borne their first baby with six more to follow over the next 17 years. Shockingly, no one had a clue – neither the mother nor the neighbours.
When the truth did come out, Amstetten was stunned and with it, the rest of the world.
The town should drown in shame, railed a national daily while another asked the entire community to introspect.
Some of the responses across Austria to this incident:
"It’s a disgrace to our society. This father is a disgrace, He doesn't belong in this society,” said a neighbour.
"All I know is that the mother was a very pleasant woman. She always took care of the children, everything was always perfect. More I cannot say because it is just too terrible," said another neighbour.
"What I cannot understand is how he can give up his own wife and children for his daughter. It is mad if you think about it," an Austrian exclaimed.
Fritzl confessed to beating and raping Elizabeth and has been remanded to custody, though the police are still searching the house,
“It is very surprising that in a property like this where several parties live, nobody noticed that he was living a complete second life,” said District Governor Hans-Heinz Lenze.
Many questions remain unanswered, however: How did Fritzl feed his captives? How were the babies were born and cared for in a windowless dungeon? How his wife remained clueless for 24 years? and perhaps most importantly, what drove Fritzl to commit this barbaric act?
Austria is now wondering why such incidents are taking place there. A similar case hit the headlines in 2006 when a Viennese schoolgirl, Natashca Kampusch, was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held in a cellar by her captor for eight years. She finally managed to escape and has now offered emotional and financial help to Elizabeth and the Fritzl family.
Out of the seven children, six have survived, three of them have been raised in the cellar and three were being raised openly who Fritzl claimed were his grandchildren abandoned by Elizabeth.
(With inputs from Prachee Sinha and CNN's Phil Black)
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