Incest father Josef Fritzl: ''I am not a monster'' (Video)
VIENNA, June 10 (RIA Novosti) - The 19-year-old daughter of an Austrian man who fathered a family in a home-made dungeon in an infamous incest case has awoken from her induced coma, doctors announced on Tuesday.
Kerstin Fritzl was born and raised in a cellar below Josef Fritzl's garden, and was brought out and taken to hospital on April 19 after suffering multiple organ failure. Doctors had put her into an artificial coma as an emergency measure.
The hospital in Amstetten, Lower Austria, confirmed in an official statement that Kerstin had woken from her coma several days ago and has been taken out of intensive care, but said she will still need "intensive medical and therapeutic treatment."
The statement did not confirm reports that Kirsten had been reunited with her mother Elisabeth, also in the hospital, who psychologists say may never recover from her 24-year-ordeal of imprisonment and sexual abuse.
Josef Fritzl, 73, confessed soon after his arrest to having fathered seven children with his daughter Elizabeth, who he jailed in the bunker back in 1984.
National media reports said Elizabeth, now 42, finally agreed to speak to police about her ordeal when she learned that without her statement her father could avoid a prison term.
Police are keeping a 24-hour guard around the hospital, a focus of intense media attention, with paparazzi photographers desperate to get the first shot of the family members. Elizabeth Fritzl, described by witnesses as frail and prematurely aged after spending most of her life without sunlight or fresh air and in constant fear of her father, is being kept with her sons Stephan and Felix, who also grew up in the cellar.
The case came to light when doctors found a note on Kirsten from her mother, sparking a search for Elizabeth. Josef Frizl then freed his captives from the cellar, telling his astonished wife that their daughter Elizabeth had decided to return.
The ensuing investigation revealed that Josef Fritzl, who had a previous rape conviction, had been abusing his daughter since she was 11. He is currently in custody pending charges, and is expected to face trial later this year.
Three other children born of the incestuous relationship were brought up by Fritzl and his wife in their house.
Fritzl's 69 year-old wife Rosemarie insists she knew nothing about her husband's second family, and is currently receiving psychiatric care in the Amstetten hospital.
Apart from the six children that Fritzl is known to have fathered in the cellar, which he claimed to have built as a nuclear bomb shelter, he is also said to have incinerated a seventh that died shortly after birth.
