Chaos in Austria

Josef Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth emerged from the windowless basement where he had locked her up with three of her children and was reunited on Sunday with three other children from whom she had been separated shortly after birth. A seventh baby died in the cellar after it was born.
Austria's justice minister presented a bill on Tuesday to strengthen the country's "victim protection law", particularly in matters of sexual abuse.
In a case that has shocked Austria and the world, Elisabeth, now 42, spent nearly a quarter of a century without seeing sunlight with her daughter aged 19 and two sons aged 18 and 5.
The three other children - two girls and one boy - lived in the house above the cellar with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, who also had seven children of their own
Kepplinger said his clinic had a school where Elisabeth's children could be educated as part of their recovery process, and the three who had been locked up in the cellar could read and write, although not very well.
The reunion between Elisabeth and her mother Rosemarie had also been "astonishing", Kepplinger said.
DNA tests confirmed that Fritzl, a 73-year-old retired electrical engineer, was the father of all six surviving children his daughter had born, police said.
Prosecutors were now investigating him over the death of the seventh child, whose remains he had burnt in a furnace, and said he could be charged in connection with the child's death.
Detectives were still combing the 60 square metre cellar beneath Fritzl's home, Franz Prucher,
Fritzl appeared before a judge in St Poelten, the provincial capital of Lower Austria, on Tuesday, and was ordered to be held in detention while police inquiries continued.
Officials said Fritzl said nothing on the advice of his lawyer. He was calm and had been put in a cell where he can be monitored in case he tries to commit suicide.
Elisabeth Fritzl says her father lured her into the cellar in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.
Her fate came to light when the 19-year-old daughter became ill and was taken to hospital. Doctors appealed for her mother to come forward to give details of her medical history.
She was stable but critical on Tuesday, in an artificially induced coma and breathing with a ventilator.
"Our patient is in a severely life-threatening condition which resulted from a lack of oxygen caused sometime between Wednesday and Friday when she was admitted," Doctor Albert Reiter said.
The case has shocked Austrians less than two years after teenager Natascha Kampusch escaped from the basement near Vienna where she had been locked up by an abductor for eight years.
"There are a million unanswered questions," investigator Polzer told Reuters. "How could he manage to live with what he had done? How did he fool everyone?"
"Fritzl was a very cunning man. He not only fooled his wife, but officials, the police, everyone."
Elisabeth and three of the children were kept in a complex which was in some places no more than 1.7 metres high and contained a padded cell, according to authorities.
DNA tests showed that Fritzl was the father of her six surviving children, police have said.

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