“I am not the beast the media depicts me as.”
What utter, utter, utter bullshit. I’m sorry, Mr-daughter-raping-imprison-your-family-in-a-dungeon-Fritzl, YOU ARE A MONSTER And that doesn’t change because you bought your daughter flowers every so often. You were not saving your daughter from “breaking the rules” and running away (which she was probably doing because of your abuse, anyway). For selfish reasons, you made a conscious decision to ignore your daughter’s rights and welfare as a human being. For selfish reasons, you made a conscious choice to kidnap Elizabeth, to imprison her, to rape her repeatedly, to have children with her, to take some of those children away from her and to doom some of those children never to see the sun. Don’t try and make it out that you are a good and kindly man with your daughter’s best interests at heart. No. Just don’t. YOU ARE A BEAST.
And, above all, you do not get to whine about how you are portrayed in the media.
When I read the first sentence I thought you were referring to a comment that “party boy” Corey made on Big Brother last night! lol
I can’t believe Fritzl said that. What sort of idiot is he? Actually, don’t answer that…we know what sort of idiot he is already.
Ugh - somehow the pretend-normalcy of bringing her flowers and having her cook ‘our favourite meal’ actually makes him seem even more monstrous (if that were possible).
Bri, I’m refusing to watch Big Brother, even occasionally, so I have no idea what over-paid party boy said.
Anwen, I definitely agree, especially when you consider that Elizabeth was probably experiencing some form of Stockholm Syndrome and\or it was in her best interests to play along with Daddy, since he controlled her entire tiny environment and access to food, relative ’safety’ and basic survival.
Frankly, when your defense of yourself is “I could have killed them and I didn’t” you lose. At life, at being human, at everything. It’s just one of those stories where, no, it’s not more complicated than it seems. He IS a monster. Period.
I shuddered when I read that he talked about “our favorite meal” and bringing her flowers. How he felt he was saving her from herself. Absolute self-absorbtion on his part, no concern for her at all as an autonomous individual.
I think he gets a tiny, tiny bit of credit for taking his (grand)daughter to the hospital when she got sick and letting his daughter out to talk to the doctors. But it doesn’t make him a good person, not that he’ll ever be capable of understanding that.
Does anyone else wonder what might have gone on with that nineteen year old (grand)daughter? I wonder if she was being molested/raped too.
The horrifying thing is that I firmly believe that Fritzl doesn’t believe himself to be a monster. I think he’s being honest…from a hideously twisted point of view.
From a clear point of view, obviously this man is a monster who needed to be stopped more than twenty years ago. Alas, that is now impossible, so it’s going to take a very long time to clean up after him.
But his belief in his own decency was probably a big part of why it took so long and such dramatic circumstances to learn the truth. If he had a shred of real decency in him, his guilty conscience would have ratted him out at least twenty years ago. That’s plenty of proof for me that this man is, indeed, every bit as monstrous as he’s been portrayed.
And a man who wasn’t entirely a monster would keep his fool mouth shut because he would understand his actions were monstrous.
Sociopaths, meet your leader.
This is common sociopathic behavior (rationalizing that “it” really isn’t all that bad because he meant something else). He needs to be taken outback and shot. Sadly, he may get off due to insanity or Austria’s 15 year sentencing limit.
So far as I can tell, anyone who uses the reasoning “I could have done worse and I didn’t” thinks this makes them a good person. Or at least a good enough person.
Anyone who knows they’re hurting someone and keeps doing it just because they don’t want to stop is a monster.