Word: childrened
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...Fritzl. In 1984, their father, Josef, the authoritarian patriarch of an already sprawling Austrian family, locked his teenage daughter Elisabeth into a converted nuclear shelter underneath his house in the town of Amstetten so he could rape her at will. His incestuous abuse led to the birth of seven children, three of whom he kept imprisoned underground with their mother. Until April 26, when Austrian authorities discovered Fritzl's lair, reality for those children stretched no further than their dank, windowless confines, their mother's memories of the outside, and a television...
...From this subterranean realm, Felix, 5, Stefan, 18, and Kerstin, 19, have now come blinking into the world. While Austria recoils in horror at the crime that produced the children, and grapples with how it remained undiscovered for so long, the Fritzls have a more basic challenge ahead of them: survival. Can children constrained to such a stunted sphere adjust to the world's cacophony? And what can modern science and medicine do to help...
...like that of his siblings, is ghostly pale. Life in a warren of narrow corridors and low ceilings has damaged the spatial orientation of Stefan and Felix, and there may be more serious consequences for all three: health experts say a chronic lack of sunlight and exercise can leave children's bones pliable, their muscles weak and their eyes overly sensitive to strong light...
...Thursday, the Austrian publication News Magazin published comments from the incarcerated Josef Fritzl conveyed by his lawyer. Fritzl declared he was a good father, bringing gifts to his children in what he called "the bunker" and spending time watching videos and having dinner with them. He did say that what he did was wrong and that he "must have been crazy." "With every week that I held my daughter, my situation got crazier," he said through his lawyer. "I repeatedly thought about whether I should let her go or not." But he kept her prisoner through seven pregnancies...
...Psychologists say the bond between the children may help with their treatment. But their macabre upbringing raises an array of emotional concerns, not least for their long-term sexual development. Exposed to perversion from a young age, it may prove difficult for them to navigate future romantic relationships. Kevin Browne, Professor of Forensic Child Psychology at the University of Liverpool, says proximity to such extreme abuse can result in frigidity, promiscuity, or even abuse in later life...