Incest Monster: Fritzl daughter tells of fight to save children

A WOMAN whose father locked her in a cellar for nearly a quarter of a century and had seven children by her will tell a court next week that she “tried to please him” in order to protect her daughter and sons from his abuse.

In filmed testimony, Elisabeth Fritzl, 43, will describe being assaulted by her father for the first time at the age of 11, when she defended herself against rape by “kicking and screaming”, according to sources close to the investigation.

Josef Fritzl, 74, who goes on trial next week for murder, incest, unlawful imprisonment and “enslavement”, is convinced he could serve fewer than 10 years in prison for what has been described as Austria’s most horrific post-war crime.

The trial will raise uncomfortable questions about Austrian society, highlighting police failings and a town’s astonishing blindness to what was unfolding beneath one of its main streets, where Fritzl held Elisabeth as a sex slave for 24 years in a warren of windowless, soundproofed rooms.