Josef Fritzl: A man apart, an arch-demon indeed

The alternative evolution of man

When men plumb the depths of depravity that it is impossible to fathom the realities of what gets narrated as truth, have we come to crossroads on the evolution of humanity?

We are disgusted and reviled by stories of children being sexually abused by adults; it becomes unspeakably repulsive when that adult is the parent of the child.

There is no field of psychoanalysis that can confidently explain why a father should find his daughter so sexually attractive that he would indulge in incest.

A man apart – an arch-demon in truth

The news waves are regaling us with stories of Josef Fritzl who lured, captured, drugged and handcuffed his daughter at 18 and imprisoned her in a dungeon below his home where he engaged in enforced incestuous domination of the girl for 24 years and produced 7 children by her.

The strongest word the criminal justice system can find for such acts are adjectives of the word crime, but this is more than a crime, it is an abomination, an aberration, a taboo conceived and carried out by a man who could well be an arch-demon deep in the vortex of what leads to the core of hell.

No parental control should get this far

It would be speculation to suggest that Josef Fritzl had not previously sexually abused other young girls till it got to a time that he thought his daughter had come of age for abuse at 11 years of age.

The power of choice, freedom and life that he exercised over his daughter and his children by his daughter should be a subject for serious analysis, nobody should because they have parental rights exercise such untrammelled control over their children to their utter detriment as we have witnessed with this case.

One can only wonder what appealed to that iota of humanity that he had left that he allowed his very sick child to go to hospital for treatment and now the saga has opened as an almost unbelievable tale.

This is the same man who on finding out that one of the twins his daughter gave birth to had died unceremonious dumped the body in an incinerator.

We find ourselves shocked at what our humanity would abhor but has been enacted by one of our species.

God save the children

The children whose split identity would call on the widest available amelioration resources are caught in a maelstrom they cannot begin to understand – being siblings of their mother and grandchildren of their father – this could very well lead to the onset of severe mental illness.

One can only hope that the goodness of humanity, the compassion of the community and the succour of many would help those children escape the damaged existence this unconscionably evil man brought them into.

Theories abound about the man’s secrecy, deception and machinations that even those under his roof did not know of his family below, in the cellar.

Questions abound

Austrians have to ask themselves some serious soul-searching questions because this is a rupture in their society one that has replaced the norm with some ethereal nightmare that does not seem to be near its end.

Have the Austrians becomes so satisfied, so contented and so respectable that their duty of social enquiry has been stunted by the need to maintain civility and polite coexistence?

Is there a traditional complacency of comfort that allows for them to accept political liaisons in their government that gives legitimacy to extreme right-wing parties?

Is this, almost too many already – one similar case happened 2 years ago with Natascha Kampusch – abuse of girls and women inadvertently woven into some fabric of their developmental process that some unstable men are playing it out, in reality?