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Josef Fritzl was a 'born rapist'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-22 11:19

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who fathered seven children with his daughter after keeping her imprisoned in a cellar for 24 years, is an "emotional invalid" and described himself as a "born rapist".


psychiatric evaluation findsJosef Fritzl was a 'born rapist' .  [Agencies]  

"I have realised I had an evil side. But I managed to contain myself for quite a long time, for someone who was a born rapist," Fritzl is quoted as saying in a psychiatric evaluation that was leaked to the Die Kronen Zeitung.

The highly confidential report, prepared by a forensic psychiatrist after numerous sessions with Fritzl, 73, was leaked to the Austrian tabloid , which quoted passages from it claiming that Fritzl had been beaten and mistreated by his mother, who only had him to prove to her partner that she was not infertile.

According to the newspaper, Dr Heidi Kastner, the psychiatrist who examined Fritzl for the purposes of the trial, wrote in her report that he was "like a volcano", quiet on the surface and seemingly trying to be good, while "the evil in him would break out" as he was "unable to control his urges".

Fritzl, a respectable engineer who also invested in real estate, is awaiting trial for sexually abusing and imprisoning his daughter.

He told authorities that his daughter Elisabeth, 42, had joined a cult. He managed to adopt three of the children he fathered with her after he claimed she had dumped the babies on his doorstep. The three other surviving children, aged five to 19, were forced to live with their mother in the concrete bunker below.

After the story was unveiled earlier this year, it emerged that Fritzl had already served a prison sentence for raping a young nurse in her home in 1967.

Dr Kastner's report claims that following the prison sentence Fritzl came up with the "ideal solution" in setting up a double life that it mirrored his personality: upstairs we would lead a normal life, while in the cellar he could "act out" the perversions of his "dark side".

He was convinced that his daughter would belong to him alone and that even if she broke free she would never be attractive to another man.

Dr Kastner claimed in her report that Fritzl is fit for trial because he was at all times responsible for his actions, but she nevertheless noted that he suffered from a severe "personality disorder" and a "deviant sexuality" and was "highly" likely to reoffend in given the opportunity.

The prosecution has reportedly used Dr Kastner's report to demand that Fritzl be put on trial like a normal criminal but then that he be locked up in an asylum for the criminally insane for the rest of his life.

The decision stirred some controversy in the country, as it would mean that Fritzl would receive psychiatric counselling and spend his final years in conditions superior to that of a normal prison.