WHEN it is published it will be the mother of all misery memoirs. As her father was jailed for life last week, it emerged Elisabeth Fritzl is writing a book about her 24 years' incarceration in the cellar of her Austrian home.
The relentless bleakness of her ordeal – the cramped nature of her confinement; the almost daily rapes; the incestuous babies born in the dark, dank place – will ensure her story is the most avidly read autobiography since David Pelzer's A Child Ca
lled It. But unlike most books of its genre, it has the potential to provide more than just titillation for those who like to suffer vicariously. Elisabeth's account of her life should afford an unparalleled insight into the indomitability of the human spirit, and an understanding of how difficult it is to cope with a quarter century of changes you've witnessed only through the prism of television.
Last week's trial furnished us with all the information we could ever require about the logistics of Fritzl's crime: we know he started abusing his daughter, Elisabeth, when she was 11, imprisoned her in the cellar in 1984, and fathered her seven children (four of whom he sent upstairs to be looked after). We know he damaged her with over-sized sex toys and that at night the family would cuddle up in bed and listen to the rats.
And yet some of the details that emerged in court and elsewhere were so incongruous they raise more questions than they answer: the image of the family whiling away the hours making models out of cardboard boxes, for example. Or the way that, despite her position of weakness, Elisabeth learned to negotiate with Fritzl for such "luxuries" as a washing machine. Is it possible that, even in their subterranean prison, the Fritzls snatched fleeting moments of contentment; that, in the most dysfunctional of circumstances they created a structure and routine that allowed them to survive?
Arguably the aspect of the case that has been least explored, so far, has been the role played by Elisabeth's mother Rosemarie. Portrayed variously as a well-turned out pillar of society and a downtrodden frau, she claims to have had no idea her daughter and three of her grandchildren were imprisoned beneath her feet.
Despite the fact that Fritzl often spent the night in the cellar, she accepted his story that Elisabeth had run off to join a cult (although she knew he had served a jail sentence for rape). Even when one, two and then three "abandoned" children were left on the doorstep for her to rear, it never occurred to her to challenge her husband's version of events.
The police seem to have accepted her denials at face value, on the basis that the alternative would represent an unpalatable contravention of the natural order. At a press conference, Franz Polzer, the police chief of Lower Austria, asked: "What woman would stay silent if she knew her husband had seven children with his daughter and was holding her prisoner in the cellar?" Which begged the question: "What man would put her there in the first place?" In any case, with no forensic evidence suggesting Rosemarie had ever set foot in the cellar, she was not even formally questioned.
And yet concerns lingered. Some people continued to suggest Rosemarie knew more than she was letting on, with one witness claiming to have seen her shop for nappies and baby food. So what did Elisabeth make of her mother's behaviour?
After the cellar family were released last year, the pair had an "emotional reunion". It wasn't long, however, before word began to leak out that there were tensions between them. Elisabeth, it is said, couldn't cope with the fact the upstairs children continued to call Rosemarie "mum" and so threw her out of the psychiatric unit the family now shared. Whether or not she suspects her mother was complicit in her abduction, Elisabeth seems to blame her for allowing Fritzl back in the house after his rape conviction, and for doing nothing to protect her from his abuse.
The least that can be said about Rosemarie is that she ought to have known what was going on. The clues were all around here if she'd chosen to see them: Fritzl's obsessive secrecy, the unfeasibly high electricity bills accrued by tenants (who were unwittingly paying the bill for the cellar). And yet, when she finally spoke out last week, it was not to acknowledge her shame and sorrow over Elisabeth's fate, but, like Fritzl, to wallow in her own unhappiness. "My life has already been ruined enough. I don't have any money," said Rosemarie, who has now changed her name.
The fact that she never guessed the truth suggests either that it suited her to turn a blind eye, or that she was suffering from cognitive dissonance – a process that allows the partners of thugs, alcoholics and paedophiles to suspend disbelief; to continue to support their wayward partners in the face of mounting evidence of their misdemeanours.
Rosemarie would certainly seem to fit that pattern: she is said both to have been the victim of Fritzl's violent rages and to have once stood by as he beat their son Harald. Even after Elisabeth and her children emerged from the cellar, it took months for Rosemarie to announce she was divorcing him and she refused to testify against him.
With Fritzl now being investigated for four murders, though, the question of how much Rosemarie knew and when is a pressing concern. It is to be hoped that Elisabeth's book will be able to throw a light on her mother's almost wilful ignorance; and the question of why so many women are prepared to put their love for their partners before the safety of their children.
