The Child Protection eNewsletter

Austrian father confesses to raping and imprisoning daughter for 24 years…  

Three children freed from a cellar in which their mother had been imprisoned and raped by her own father for 24 years had never seen daylight, police in Austria have confirmed.  Read More

Police spokesman Franz Polzer told CNN that 73-year-old Josef Fritzl admitted holding his daughter, Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, hostage in the windowless cell and fathering seven children by her.

"The mother had memories [of the outside world] and got used to the situation," Polzer told a press conference.  "The others knew nothing else."

The main question reverberating from the small Austrian town:  How could a man keep his daughter locked in his basement for 24 years, where she gave birth to seven of his children while her mother and three of those children lived upstairs without an inkling of the horrors in the cellar?

Fritzl explained Elisabeth's disappearance by saying she had run away from home, a story backed up by letters he forced Elisabeth to write, including one that begged her parents not to look for her.  Other letters made it seem the missing daughter had left the three children on the parents' doorstep—when in fact they had been born in captivity in the family's basement.

Elisabeth told police that she and her three children Kerstin, 19; Stefan, 18; and Felix, 5, did not see the light of day during their entire time in captivity underneath the building in Amstetten, a rural town about 150 km (93 miles) west of Vienna.

Elisabeth is described as "very disturbed" and having trouble talking to police about her ordeal, reports CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen.  She went missing in 1984, when she was 18 years old, police have said.

More details also emerged at the news conference about the basement dungeon in which the daughter and her children were kept—and how her father managed to keep them captive for more than two decades.

The authorities have revealed that the prison, constructed in the basement of the 1960s building, ran underneath both the building itself and the garden outside.

The entrance was via a small door, hidden behind cupboards in the basement, controlled by an electronic keyless-entry system.  Polzer said that the prison was hard to find, even if someone was looking for it, and had been soundproofed.

Detectives made the grim discovery about the cellar earlier this month after Kerstin was hospitalized in Amstetten after falling unconscious and taken to a hospital in Amstetten by her grandfather with a SOS note from her mother hidden on her.

A DNA test was later carried out which revealed her grandfather, Josef Fritzl, was also her father, according to ORF, Austria's state-run news agency.

That sparked a police investigation, which revealed that Fritzl fathered at least six children with his daughter, forcing her and three of the surviving children to live in the cellar of his house, according to ORF's Peter Schmitzberger.

31 of 53 underage teen girls at FLDS ranch have been pregnant… 

More than half the teen girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas either are pregnant or have children, state officials said.  Read More

A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado.  Of those girls, 31 have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar.

"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.

State officials took custody of all 463 children at the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying a pattern of teen girls forced into underage "spiritual" marriages and sex with much older men created an unsafe environment for the sect's children.

Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 cannot generally consent to sex with an adult.  A girl can get married with her parent's permission at 16, but none of these girls are believed to have legal marriages under state law.

Meanwhile, from Amarillo to Houston, all of the children removed from the ranch are settling into new surroundings, and caretakers are getting cultural pointers on how to deal with them.  Read More

No television, no movies, no radio and nothing red at the shelters and group homes where the children are staying.

"The color 'RED' is not acceptable for clothing," said a memo that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services sent to caretakers for the children.  Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sect members believe red is reserved for Jesus Christ, according to officials in Utah.  So workers at the Children's Shelter in San Antonio spent part of the week taking anything colored red off the walls and floors.

Another memo from state officials to caretakers describes the children's dietary and clothing needs.  Some officials said they were sensitive to potential culture shock among the children, who led a sheltered life on the ranch near Eldorado.

"Help them with self-esteem, guilty feelings, shame, confusion about mainstream culture, and learning basic decision making skills," said another memo to caretakers.

At least nine children taken from the ranch are or have been in the hospital and attorneys for most of the mothers say they have received little or no information about their conditions.  Read More  Attorneys for Texas Rio-Grande Legal Aid (TRLA) are working to identify the children and the hospitals, and to arrange for the mothers to visit the children.

The legal aid society, which represents 48 mothers, said one 2-year-old child lost a severe amount of weight while staying at the San Angelo Coliseum.  TRLA said the organization was told two days ago that the child was in shock and lethargic, but has received no new information since then about where the child is or regarding her current health situation.

In other news… 

Portuguese detectives are investigating the attempted abduction of a Dutch girl by a man who matches the description of a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case.  Read More  The 15-year-old was walking home from a supermarket in the tiny fishing village of Senhora da Rocha when she was followed by a man in a black Jeep with tinted windows.  After a few minutes, he pulled up in front of her and opened the driver's door so she could not get past.  He then tried to entice her into the vehicle, and when she tried to escape, he grabbed her and tried to pull her in.  The girl managed to fight him off, with the attacker driving off when a car approached from the opposite direction.  She described the man as about 40 years old, with long hair in a pony tail and gold rings on his fingers.  This matches the description of the man Kate and Gerry McCann believe snatched their daughter, 30 miles away in the coastal resort of Praia da Luz.  See  vol6_iss6.

The mother of "Beloved Doe"—a malnourished, unidentified boy whose body was found in a Houston trash bin more than five years ago—has been identified and charged with his death, officials told KPRC Local 2.  Read More  "Beloved Doe" was 5-year-old Jose Bernardo Martinez.  He was found in a Dumpster at the Willowcreek Apartments on Office City Drive on March 13, 2003.  FBI officials said Jose had been wrapped in a gray blanket and placed in a plastic bag.  He was wearing only a diaper.  His 30-year-old mother, Ma Dana Martinez, was charged with felony murder—injury to a child by omission, officials said.  Jose died from dehydration and malnutrition, an autopsy ruled.  He weighed between 18 and 28 pounds at the time of his death.

After three days in which Pope Benedict XVI persistently addressed the scandal of child sexual abuse by priests, a top Vatican official said that the church was considering changes to the canon laws that govern how it handles such cases.  Read More  The official, Cardinal William J. Levada, would not specify which canons were under reconsideration.  But he suggested that they related to the church’s statute of limitations, saying that his office has frequently had to judge allegations from years before because the victims “don’t feel personally able to come forward” until they are more mature.  The comments by the cardinal, who heads the Vatican office that rules on cases of sexual abuse that are forwarded to Rome by bishops throughout the world, were apparently spontaneous, and came in response to questions from three reporters as he left a luncheon in New York given by Time magazine.

Florida teacher Stephanie Ragusa is expected to appear in court this morning after being arrested again Monday—again charged with having sex with a student.  Read More  Out on bail after being accused of having sex with two students, Ragusa had sex Monday with one of the students and was arrested again, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said.  This is the third time in about six weeks Ragusa has been arrested on similar sex charges.  "She's in need of help," said sheriff's Lieutenant Fred Asteasuainzarra, one of the detectives who interviewed Ragusa.  See  vol6_iss22  and  vol6_iss30  for more on this story.

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