Kidnapped girl escapes her "Master" and returns home after 8 years (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

She was 10 when she dissapeared. She was locked in some guy's basement for the better part of the last 8 years. Pretty harrowing stuff.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/...012740579.html

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H

 

[Joe Szott]

Wow, that's a new one.

The silver lining is the guy went ahead and killed himself, so no expensive trials or long jail terms required. What a sicko...

 

[Holadem]

I dunno, I would have prefered he got a taste of his own medicine, life in prison, a good portion of it in solitary confinement.

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H

 

[CRyan]

Yeah. This is one of those situations where I would not mind tax dollars being spent giving this guy prison time (I assume tax money is spent on prisons in Austria). He got the easy way out. This girls gets no restitution.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Life in federal, pound your ass prison is too good for him.

 

[Paul D G]

Actually it's not a new one at all. Here's the story of Carol Smith, who was held as a sex slave for seven years, was kept in a box under the bed, and forced to wear a soundproof box on her head:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal...ave/index.html

-paul

 

[Holadem]

After the latest abomination from Austria (a story so horrific as to dwarf the one in the original post), The Times (UK) asks: Why are child abuse scandals happening in Austria? - Times Online and, Austria: ‘We have to ask what’s going wrong’ - Times Online -- H

 

[KurtEP]

Yeah, I saw that earlier. That's almost as bad as it gets.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I suppose it's a question worth asking.

I would like to think those are just aberrations of the most horrible kind. But both articles sure ask a lot of pointed, cultural questions.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I must have missed this thread originally, but on reading about the latest Austrian case of 73-yr old father imprisoning his own daughter for 24 years -- how on earth did his wife not know?? -- I was thinking of the Law & Order SVU episode when Olivia was still undercover somewhere in Oregon (or WA?) and helped 'recover' such an abductee. At the time I watched that ep I didn't realise it was another 'ripped from the headlines' plot.

 

[Holadem]

They need to lock her up for stupidity of dangerous proportions. She has utterly failed her daughter.

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H

 

[andrew markworthy]

Holadem, I think we need to see all the facts of the case first. I sat through the press conference yesterday and the police were at pains to point out that: (1) the basement prison was so well hidden that it took the police two hours to get in even when they knew what they were looking for; (2) the mother was convinced the daughter had run away, so she had no reason to look and in any case the arrival of babies may have convinced her that the daughter was alive, just living elsewhere; (3) by all accounts the accused was a bit of a tyrant with everyone which detered a lot of prying. It is thus perfectly possible the mother didn't know the daughter was in the house (which in any case was a fairly large property divided into apartments - it wasn't like the basement was right underneath the woman's kitchen and living room in a small house).

 

[Kevin Hewell]

I still think there was a lot of denial going on there on the part of the mother.

 

[Radioman970]

Crazy. That other Austrian story still has my head spinning. Now here's THIS story. That poor girl...8 years old! At least the freak didn't kill her and now she's free. But there will be a lot of years of therapy. :frowning:

On the bright side, if you've been sitting on your sicko thriller novel along these lines it would be the perfect time to send it to the publisher. I wish I had the frame of mind right now to throw one down.

 

[andrew markworthy]

A former lodger who had lived in the apartment directly over the basement said that in twenty years there he had never suspected a thing.

And as for denial, the other kids in the family grew up, left home and led normal lives. The tale spun to the mother that the daughter had run away is not that weird (there are enough runaways every day, alas, to support this argument). The fact that the father came back with babies the daughter had supposedly 'abandoned' was also proof enough that the daughter was alive. Why should the mother therefore be in denial? She had a very plausible and upsetting scenario about what her daughter was doing. And this is anything but denial.

 

[dany]

The mother now could be as screwed up as her daughter. Pretty sick stuff.