Fritzl forced to watch daughter's rape testimony

Josef Fritzl was forced to watch video testimony Tuesday from the daughter he locked up and raped at will over 24 years on the second day of his trial for incest and murder.

The 73-year-old Austrian defendant, who on Monday admitted charges of rape, incest and sequestration, but denied the most serious charges of murder and enslavement, also allowed himself to be photographed for the first time since the trial began.

"He is simply ashamed," his lawyer Rudolf Mayer told Austrian television after Fritzl earlier attempted to bury his face in a blue folder.

The video testimony by Fritzl's daughter Elisabeth, now 42, took place behind closed doors in order to protect her identity in a trial so disturbing that even jurors were being offered psychological care.

Fritzl, too, is being accompanied by a psychiatrist to whom he had access during breaks in the trial, said Erich Huber-Guensthofer, deputy director of Sankt Poelten prison, where the defendant is being held.

"That's a key point of prison care and is part of suicide prevention measures," he added.

Since her release from the hell-hole in which she was incarcerated for nearly a quarter of a century, Elisabeth and the children she gave birth to as a result of the long years of rape and sexual abuse have been in hiding.

Much of the trial is closed to media and the public as a result, with court officials and lawyers only giving out procedural information to protect the victims' privacy.

Asked how the defendant reacted to the tapes, court spokesman Franz Cutka would only say that Fritzl had watched them "attentively".

"The defendant was questioned about the issues that came up ... and he gave his views," added Cutka.

Cutka similarly declined to describe the responses of the eight jurors.

But he revealed that psychological care was being offered to the jurors given the horrifying nature of the case and the evidence they have had to review.

The prosecution has requested that Fritzl be placed in a psychiatric institution after the trial.

"If found guilty and if he is assigned to a facility for mentally abnormal offenders, then the justice minister will decide where," Cutka said.

During her opening statement on Monday, chief prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser passed the jury a box containing objects from the cellar that had kept its moist stench. They flinched.

Also on Tuesday, the court heard a neo-natal expert to help clarify the murder charge against Fritzl, which carries a life sentence.

The prosecution accuses him of letting one of the seven incest children die shortly after birth in 1996. Fritzl says the baby was stillborn and he burnt the body.

"This is the face of evil," said the Kleine Zeitung daily alongside a picture of Fritzl hiding his face at Monday's trial opening. "A coward till the end," added the Kronen Zeitung tabloid.





Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. AP Photo/Las Vegas News Bureau, Brian Jones