Mother locks up girls in cellar for seven years

Three Austrian girls were locked up in a cellar by their mother for seven years. Police discovered the girls in the city of Linz in 2005 but waited until Sunday to release the report, which comes six months after Austria was shocked by the story of Natascha Kampusch who escaped her kidnapper after spending eight years in a cellar. The three girls were the victims of their own mother, who became depressed after her divorce. The girls, now 14, 18 and 21 years old, spent seven years in almost complete darkness. Their mother has to appear in court in a few weeks on charges of abuse and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

(Source: RNW.nl)

According to another source, they spend their time playing with mice. They also spoke their own language and suffered severe mental and physical trauma. In addition, the filth and feces were piled up a meter high. Their neighbor had strong suspicions about what was going on, but he had to threaten to sue the city before the police came over to have a look.

[ 02-12-2007, 06:33 AM: Message edited by: Dreamer128 ]

That's awful, from the standpoint of a psychologist it's fascinating despite being terrible. The words, "They also spoke their own language," draw the most of my attention. Would that be in addition to their native language? If they were only in the cellar for eight years one would assume they'd have already formed the concrete foundations needed for speech in their native tongue. Perhaps that was how they chose to pass the time... Sad, indeed.

It's also alarming that the police were so lax about the reports from the neighbor that they didn't even look into it until he threatened to sue.

There's so much you could say about this from a psychological veiwpoint (I won't start), but from another point, it's awful that people can do this.

Woah! did this actually happen?
:(

Dragonshadow.. bring some beer [img]tongue.gif[/img] the vodka's all gone.