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Preparations for Austrian Incest Trial

Pilgrimage to Hell

By Julia Jüttner in Amstetten

The people of Amstetten are bracing for a new onslaught of the world's media for the trial of Josef. F, the 73-year-old Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

From March 16, the Austrian town of St Pölten will be in the spotlight of the world's media because Josef F., the man who imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth in his cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, will stand trial here.

The city authorities are making final preparations. Extension cables are being laid for the TV trucks, a civic hall will be used for daily news conferences, and hundreds of police are being mobilized to cordon off the courthouse.

Forget about finding a hotel room in this town of 51,000 about 65 kilometers from Vienna. The journalists and camera crews have resorted to renting private apartments such as the elegant, high-ceilinged flat where Anton Kraushofer lives.

Kraushofer's abode, apart from being a few minutes' walk from the courthouse, has an added attraction -- it actually belongs to F.

Four years ago Kraushofer's father sold the residential block with seven flats, a shoe shop and a pizza restaurant in the ground floor to the retired engineer now facing trial on charges of homicide because one of the children died shortly after it was born, as well as rape, incest, slavery and false imprisonment.

Kraushofer, 33, was allowed to choose the prettiest apartment in the block. Unfortunately the firm which manages the block didn't like the idea of him profiting from the intense worldwide media interest in F.'s trial and forbade him to sublet it. So the salesman changed tactics and advertised rooms for "guests" for the duration of the trial.

His guests will shortly be arriving from Qatar. "I will be hosting journalists from the news channel al-Jazeera in Doha. Exclusively, of course," said Kraushofer. Asked how much he's getting in return for his hospitality, he just grinned.

It's an idea being copied by several of Kraushofer's neighbors in the apartment block.

Seventy kilometers away, the residents of the town of Amstetten, where F. lived and committed the crimes that reviled and fascinated the world when they came to light last April, can't understand such behavior and are still coming to terms with what happened.

Lingering Sorrow

Shopkeepers near F.'s "house of horror" in Ybbsstrasse 40 all say they can't wait for the trial to end. Pictures of their shop windows have been shown on Japanese, Russian and Czech television stations. And this little town of 23,000 is now bracing itself for a fresh onslaught of journalists and curious onlookers.

The number of photographers increases day by day. They prowl around F.' fortress-like concrete house and creep through the garden desperately looking for new angles.

One neighbor said she would go to Vienna to stay with her daughter during the trial to escape all the attention. But she finds it hard to run away from the "troubling feelings" she has about the case.

"Not even 15 meters away, three meters below ground there were people that no one knew existed," said the woman, shaking her head. "I can't think about that too much. All of us here feel for the people who suffered through that."

The trial is expected to last just one week. F. faces a possible life sentence. His daughter Elisabeth and the children have been shielded from the press throughout and were released from a psychiatric clinic in December after eight months of counselling. They are trying to rebuild their lives at a secret location.

'No One Will Manage to Forget What Happened'

The trained electrical engineer locked Elisabeth, 18 at the time, in the cellar of his house in August 1984. He told his wife she had run away to join a religious cult. What followed was a 24-year-ordeal of rape and incarceration in which Elisabeth bore him seven children.

One pensioner is fed up with being probed by reporters. "I'm not going to answer any more questions, not even what time it is," he said. A neighbor said: "My mother is putting up barbed wire around our terrace."

F.'s house looks spruced up. The lawn is freshly mown, the wooden tool shed has had a coat of polish. But the site retains its hellish aura. The people who come to see it are all from out of town. Amstetten locals avoid it. They live with the stigma of F.'s crimes and hope that after the trial things will settle down at last, said Anni Gruber, a former tenant of F.'s. "But no one will manage to forget what happened here," she adds.

Amstetten is making a painfully slow recovery from the disaster. For months after F.'s captives were released, the town seemed paralyzed, said pastor Peter Bösendorfer. He organized vigils where locals could express their sympathy for the victims.

One man said: "We tortured ourselves with the question 'should we have noticed something?' Today I say no. F. duped us all."

Karl Dunkl, 71, has known F. since childhood. He organized annual class reunions for decades, and F. came to each one of them. They last met in October 2007, half a year before F.'s double life came to light.

Their wives were at that particular reunion, Dunkl recalls. "His wife complained about the bad luck they'd had with their daughter who had joined a sect and put her children on her parent's doorstep. Today everyone can say that should have sent alarm bells ringing! But you know, if you have no reason whatsoever to suspect anything…."

The story with the sect sounded "totally credible," said Dunkl.

He added that he doesn't care about F. anymore. "But what he did was terrible. I won't forgive him, although he did nothing to me personally."

Dunkl said his wife thought F. should suffer the same fate as his daughter and children -- spend his remaining days in a dark cell.