Father held daughter in cellar for 24 years

Taken from the Independent, UK
Sunday, 27 April 2008

A woman has told police that she was held prisoner in a cellar for almost 24 years by her father, who repeatedly raped her and fathered her seven children.

Lower Austria police said in a statement that the 42-year-old woman had been missing since August 29, 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten last night following a tip-off.

Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, said the 73-year-old father had been taken into custody.

In a chronology of events outlined in a statement, police said the woman had apparently sent a letter a month after her disappearance asking her parents not to search for her.

During police questioning, she told police her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on August 28, 1984.

During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused by her father and gave birth to six children, the statement said. In 1996, she gave birth to twins but one died several days later because it was not appropriately cared for. Her father had then apparently removed the corpse from the cellar and burned it, the statement said.

Police said the woman appeared "greatly disturbed" psychologically during questioning. She agreed to talk only after authorities assured her that she would no longer have to have contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.

One of her children, a 19-year-old girl, is now in hospital the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten in very serious condition. Police said the father has been arrested but had not confessed.

Gerhard Sedlacek, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in St Poelten, said the surviving children - three boys and three girls - are aged between five and 20.

DNA tests are expected to determine whether paternity of the children.

Global Child Porn Ring Uncovered In Austria

Taken from The Times, UK, 07 Feb 2007
By Mark Bridge and agencies

Austria has uncovered a vast international child pornography ring involving 2,361 suspects from 77 countries who viewed videos of young children being sexually abused.

Guenther Platter, the Interior Minister, said: “This is the largest case of the distribution of child pornography ever.”

Mr Platter said the videos included images that showed “the worst kind of child sexual abuse.”

Harald Gremel, who headed the police investigation said: “Girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams,” adding that the children were aged 14 and under.

The Austrian authorities said 72 of the suspects were based in Britain; 23 are from Austria; 607 from the United States; 466 from Germany and 114 from France.

Police said that the Austrian suspects, who ranged in age from 17 to 69, included students, civil servants and retired people.

The suspects were identified after they viewed child pornography videos on a Russian website hosted by an Austrian internet provider last July.

Eight videos were illegally uploaded onto the website from a London server. Some 8,000 viewers logged on to the site in the space of 24 hours before police shut it down and tracked the suspects through their internet addresses in an investigation named Operation Flo.

Mr Gremel said that the videos showed children as young as five years old. He said: “The videos were presumably produced in eastern Europe.”

Police said that investigations are continuing in Britain and in Russia to identify and arrest those behind the videos.

The 23 suspects from Austria have been called in for questioning but there have been no arrests yet. A police spokesman said he expected warrants to be issued soon.

He said that fourteen of the suspects admitted owning child pornography, some in large quantities, and that some said they had passed the material on to other people.

Possession of pornographic material showing children under the age of 14 can lead to a two-year prison sentence in Austria. Those found guilty of producing or distributing such material face up to three years in jail.

Police have confiscated 31 desk top computers, seven laptops, 23 external hard drives and more than 2,000 CDs, DVDs and videos containing child pornography.

Austrian investigators also identified suspects from Algeria, Iceland and Venezuela. The investigation on suspects outside Austria has now been handed over to the countries concerned.