Obviously, the type of hostage situation that my book depicts, pales in comparison to the nightmare that Elisabeth F survived at the hands and other body parts, of her own father. Abuse is horrific at any level but this is the most vile case, that anyone could imagine. To hold your own child hostage in a tiny sound proof cell for 24 years is unfathomable.
An 18 year old girl, locked away and assumed dead, suffers the tortures of the damned. The evil events that are mentioned in the Austrian Newspaper include the belief that she gave birth to 7 of her father’s children, 6 of whom are living. The whole horrific story is awful before one’s thoughts trail on to other possibilities of her suffering and her children’s suffering. Elisabeth must have had no medical help during her pregnancies and no medical help for deliveries.
The three children, who lived in the cell with their mother, must have witnessed the rapes, the births and who knows what else? So many questions must be answered. How was it that 3 of Elisabeth’s children lived with the grand parents? Did they not give any evidence to anyone of the fact that their mother and siblings were in the basement cell? How could Elisabeth’s mother have missed the possible clues about her missing daughter, for 24 years? I find it hard to believe that she didn’t know or suspect something or anything for 24 years.
