The Child Protection eNewsletter

Joseph Fritzl had previous convictions for rape… 

Police files revealing that Josef Fritzl had previous convictions and charges for rape emerged today as his victims came forward to testify about their ordeals.  Read More

The revelations will embarrass the officers in charge of the investigation in Amstetten, where Fritzl kept his daughter Elisabeth, locked up in a dungeon beneath his home for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

Amstetten police and prosecutors had claimed that Fritzl had no criminal record.  Even if he had been convicted, they said, Austrian law demanded that all records on sex offenses are destroyed after ten years.

Officials in Linz, Upper Austria, found files from 1967 showing that Fritzl was a known sex offender.  His record contains a conviction for a rape and an attempt rape as well as an arrest for public exposure.

Fritzl served only 18 months for the rape, allegedly because a judge considered he should be reunited with his wife and four children.  The files also show that he attempted to rape a 21-year-old in the same year, but the victim was able to escape.

Also, Josef Fritzl’s lodgers revealed today that he was stealing food from them to feed his captive family.  They said Fritzl would enter the flats he was renting on the ground floor of his three-storey house when the lodgers were away and steal food from their refrigerators  They also accused Fritzl of connecting the power supply of the dungeon to their meters, so they would be forced to pay large electricity bills.

A spokesman for investigators said Fritzl repeatedly warned his captives that they would be gassed if they tried to escape.  Read More  Helmut Greiner, a spokesman for federal investigators, told the AP that officers were checking whether Fritzl had indeed set up a mechanism that could send gas into the dingy, windowless cellar as the suspect claimed during questioning.

Experts were also checking another Fritzl claim that the reinforced door leading to the enclosure had a timer that enabled it to be easily opened if he was gone for an unusually long period of time, said Greiner, spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The revelation came as authorities also said that Josef Fritzl forced his captive daughter to write a letter last year indicating he may have been planning to release her from the windowless dungeon where she lived with three of their children.  Police Colonel Franz Polzer said Elisabeth Fritzl wrote in late 2007 to her family, who believed she had fled to a cult, that she wanted to return home but "it's not possible yet."  DNA testing on the letter proved that 42-year-old Elisabeth had written it, but she was forced to by her father, Polzer said.

It is thought Fritzl first began abusing Elisabeth when she was 11, in the cellar, his car and on country walks.  Read More  It was in 1984 that Fritzl's campaign of abuse escalated and he drugged his daughter with ether before dragging her downstairs and locking her up.  Once there, he handcuffed her to a metal pole and kept her in total darkness for weeks on end.

An investigator told the Sun:  "The picture we are getting is that Fritzl planned his entrapment for years, maybe as soon as he started raping his daughter.  "We understand that Elisabeth was his favorite child because she was so pretty.  He didn't want to lose her when she turned 18 so he spent six years building the dungeon to keep her for himself forever.

"It wasn't just a sudden idea to throw his daughter in the cellar—it was plotted for years."

Tenants who shared the large house with the Fritzls were warned to stay away from the basement or face being evicted.  Alfred Dubanovsky, 42, who lived there for 12 years, told how Fritzl spent his days there but banned anyone else from going near it.

He also revealed how he had heard strange noises in the night and spotted him ferrying wheelbarrows of food under cover of darkness but did not consider it unusual.  Mr. Dubanovsky said: "I wish to God that I could turn back the clock.  The signs were all there but it was impossible for me to recognize them."

Meanwhile Alois Lissl, the chief of police of Upper Austria province, told The Associated Press that, although no evidence had surfaced so far, police have widened their investigation into an unsolved murder 22 years ago to include Fritzl because he could have been in the area at the "time and place" of the killing.  Read More

The bound body of Martina Posch was found on a shore of the Upper Austrian lake of Mondsee on November 12, 1986.  The wife of the incest suspect owned part of an inn and camp ground on the other side of the lake then.  "We have found no sign" of a concrete link up to now, Lissl said in a telephone call from Linz to the AP's Vienna bureau.  Still, he said, the incest suspect would be asked for an alibi because the property owned by his wife could mean he was in the area when Posch was killed.

Older FLDS boys may have abused younger ones… 

Texas authorities are investigating whether younger boys taken from a polygamist ranch in West Texas were sexually abused by older boys, not adults, a state official said.  Read More

Documents taken from the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado indicate that younger boys were molested by older boys at the ranch, the official, who asked not to be identified, told the Houston Chronicle.  No other details about the abuse were available

On Wednesday, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Carey Cockerell revealed to a state Senate panel that at least 41 of the 464 children in state custody had previously broken or fractured bones.  "Several of these fractures have been found in very young children and several had multiple fractures," he said.

Most of the information about the fractures was reported to DFPS' Texas Child Protective Services by the children or their mothers.  Few X-rays have been done on the children, agency officials said.

But Cockerell also told the Senate Health and Human Services Committee that the agency is looking into the possible sexual abuse of some boys, based on interviews and journal entries.

In addition, he informed the panel of several hurdles CPS workers faced in trying to identify the children and determine their health status.  He said both women and children removed plastic identity bracelets issued to them or rubbed the wording off of them.  CPS had tried to use the bracelets to help workers keep track of children.

Also, FLDS women initially refused to let the children undergo basic health screenings and many of the teen girls refused to take pregnancy tests.  The women and older children often monitored younger children, telling them not to speak to CPS workers or coaching them on what to say, Cockerell said.

Dr. Emalee Flaherty, a pediatrician in Chicago who specializes in child abuse, cautioned against jumping to conclusions that the children's broken bones were caused by abuse.  There might be many variables, she said, such as a high incidence of bone disease or a special diet that causes a vitamin deficiency that predisposes the group's children to brittle bones.

"This is a pretty closed community," Flaherty said, adding that life on a ranch might also expose children to injuries.

Dr. Bruce Perry, a Houston child psychiatrist and child abuse expert, said the type of fracture also is important.  "There are certain characteristics of fractures that go with abuse," Perry said.  "It would be really important to know what bone was fractured and the type of fracture."

In other news… 

Last winter, just as Massachusetts’s highest court was about to rule that a girl in an "irreversible vegetative state" should be removed from life support, 14-year-old Haleigh Poutre started to breathe on her own.  Read More  Haleigh, who spent the past two years at a pediatric rehabilitation hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts, suffered a near-fatal head injury in September, 2005.  Communicating with simple words and hand gestures and by spelling out full sentences by pointing to alphabet letters on a board Haleigh in December described to police the intense physical abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of her adoptive mother and stepfather, Holli and Jason Strickland, The Boston Globe reported.  Incidentally, Haleigh’s sister, Samantha Poutre, has given police a new statement about Haleigh’s injury, which put her in a coma.  Samantha initially told investigators that Haleigh was practicing a back flip when she hit her head on a basement pipe, according to defense lawyers.  Now, Samantha is saying that Jason Strickland kicked Haleigh down a flight of stairs.

A Florida teenager accused of organizing a shooting spree at DeLand Middle School spoke about the plot for the first time.  Read More  Austin Mohr is one of three seventh-graders who prosecutors said used the Internet to plan the attack.  Mohr said his behavior was simply a cry for help.  "(They) threatened to kill me.  (They) threatened to slit my throat with a razor blade.  Yes, that has happened," Mohr said.  Mohr said his time at DeLand Middle School was hellish.  The youngster said he was repeatedly bullied, picked on, beaten, and he said his anger played out on the Internet.  "Bullying is not good.  It makes suicide.  It can make people kill other people.  That's why I think there should be more laws to stop bullying," Mohr said.  Rick Mohr, the boy's father, said he may have missed signs that his son was troubled, but he said sometimes children don't confide in their parents.  They all claimed the school ignored his cries for help.  For more on bullying see resources at  vol1_iss5.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for a South Carolina teenager accused of plotting to blow up his high school says a psychiatrist has determined his client is competent to stand trial.  Read More  Defense attorney Michael Meetze says in court papers that the psychiatrist examined 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger in jail.  Prosecutors asked for the teen to be evaluated.  A federal agent said in court that Schallenberger told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus.  See  vol6_iss31

Kate McCann has revealed she and Gerry intended to take Madeleine to dinner with them on the night she vanished—but changed their minds at the last moment.  Read More  The couple had initially planned to stroll half a mile with Madeleine and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie to a restaurant that catered for families.  But because the children were tired they took the fateful decision to feed them in their flat and put them to bed instead - and then went out to dine with their friends.  Kate, telling for the first time of the seemingly inconsequential change of plan, says tearfully:  "Why didn't we go?"  The heartbreaking revelation comes in a two-hour TV special marking the first anniversary of the four-year-old's disappearance.  In the documentary Kate also tells how becoming an official police suspect only made her stronger and more determined to fight for her daughter.

New Mexico State police have removed three children from an apocalyptic church whose leader claims to be the Messiah and acknowledges having sex with some of his followers.  Read More  The two girls and one boy—all under the age of 18—were taken from the northeastern New Mexico compound following an April 22 investigation, Romaine Serna, spokeswoman for the state Children, Youth and Families Department, said.  She said a fourth child, a girl, agreed to be interviewed by the department.  Serna said that girl had been at the compound but now lives elsewhere with her parents.  The three children were taken into state custody because of allegations of inappropriate contact between minors and the adult leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, Serna said.

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