I heard about this on the news late last night.  Boggles the mind, it does!

15 Years in Jail for a 76 year old man who will probably be killed in Prison for what he's done anyway...but I'm basing it on American prisons...dunno how hardcore the Austrian Prisons are...
Still it should be a sentance for the remainder of his life...

Man, if the guy was in his 30s, I would absolutely agree with Em.. lock him up and make sure he never gets out. But at 76? He may not live 15 more years... If he does, he'll be 91 when he gets out, and I know very few people 85+ that would be any threat to anyone... *shrug*

The fact that it's up to 15 years for raping and beating his daughter and sequestration, though... I dunno, I'd think on that charge alone he should get more than 15. And if they're gonna add on murder through failure to act, he should get at least 10 or 15 for that alone. Yeah... but that's just me...

Beats me how anyone can actually hold people captive for 24 years though. And keep it a secret! How good were these deceptions? Or did maybe the family members not really care..? And do him and his wife like.. not live together? How did she NEVER have to go to the basement? I also wanna know what the kids who were held captive were like. How mentally developed are they? Do they have the same capacities to learn, they're just really really behind, or does lack of brain stimulation stunt capacity to learn? So many questions...

I'm with Ren, unless they stick his butt in isolation, he's going to find himself killed pretty quick in general population.  Fifteen years?  Try fifteen days, tops, for what he did to his own daughter.  I don't know about Austrian prisons, but I know that American Guards would make sure to tell the general pop to take "good care" of a guy like that.

No I think what he's saying is that if it was an American Prison that IS what would happen...see how long Jeffrey Dahmer survived his stay if you want proof. If he does spend time in Jail then he likely won't last long one way or another.

I don't know how much the media really overplays the issues here but prison beatings, killings etc are sadly not atypical here. He may be perfectly safe in an Austrian prison, but he'll probably die of old age regarless before he's released. But depending on which prison he went to here, he might not even live long enough to worry about that anyway.
And at the risk of sounding callous, I don't think anyone would miss THAT guy...sometimes monsters need to be put down. I don't care how much investigation goes into his background, what made him do what he did wehter it was society or genetics the fact is he commited an atrocity on his own family, the unforgiveable, unexcusable kind. I think he deserves no less than a quick, media-free death, cremation and forgetting as soon as possible so the family can move on. Mind you this is just MY opinion.
With the world-wide media attention this seems to be generating I think we'll be seeing  this dragged out for sometime unless the Austrian Justice system is incredibly resistant to media pressure and highly efficient. I have no idea. I really hope it is fast as that family really doesn't need to have it constantly shoved in their faces for the rest of their days. Those scars may never heal and certianly won't if the media keeps opening the wound and rubbing in the salt.

I know for a stone fact I'm going to sound callous, but somebody who is willing to do that to their own child and grandchildren?  Nope, I can't go with the "thank goodness no death penalty", even on a good day, and with something like this guy?  Put him down, and put him down hard.  Me, I understand the idea of civilized society, and those of you that say death is evil, hey, I disagree with you, and people like this are why.  Give his victims the satisfaction of knowing, without any ambiguity, that this guy will NEVER be able to do that to them again, by putting him all the way down and cremating his remains.

That was just about the only piece of news I heard during mmy holidays - I think my great-aunt mentioned it, and of course I had to grab the nearest newspaper.  I really need to read through last week's papers...

And I seem to remember reading that they'll have to keep him isolated from other prisoners.

I don't know Peter, I think every place has its psychos and sickos.  If they say they don't, they're lying.  It's just a part of the Law of Large Numbers *grins*.

sisterdew wrote:

and most people mistake us for australia anyway:D

You just have to remember.. Austria doesn't have Kangaroos


that makes all the difference in the world

I'd actually be curious to know the percentage of Psychopath/Sociopath/Rotten Bastard per Capita by given Country. Not just what makes the media but eveyone who's ever been arrested for Socially Abhorrent behavior like this. Then compare the current percent to the percentages per country for the last 200 years and see if the actual percentage IS rising or if we're just seeing more of it due to there being more people in the world (And more sensationalist media coverage.). if the actual percentage has risen then maybe there's a need for a deeper look into these cases for causality and ways to prevent it from happening again.

I just read an interesting book, Taylor Caldwell "The Listener" about a man who builds a place where people can go talk to the "Man who Listens" and unburden their souls because sometiems all we need is someone to listen to us and our problems. Aside from the main theme he talks a lot about how as a society we are growing weaker and weaker due to parents being more and more over-protective of their children so THEIR kids aren't exposed to the same pains THEY were exposed to. While it's a nice thought to protect the kids, if we over-protect them then how do they develop the immunities they need to survive? Not just against viruses but against the hard-knocks that life will give them. IF they don't learn how to develop a thick skin early on then they won't know what to do when they are on their own, thus leading to a rise of kids living at home for long past their teen years and having no ability to dwell in the real world and leading to anti-societal behavior because they don't know HOW to deal in the real world.
Then there's the opposite side where the parents are so apathetic to the state of their kids they let them crawl around in filth and trash and toxic materials. Reffering here to a woman who was recently in the news because her baby was taken away fro that exact kind of negligence. And I see examples of it on a nigh-daily basis; uncaring lower-class mothers screaming at their herd of unruly children while trying to get them into McDonalds for that oh so healthy meal...8P What happens to the mental development of a child raised in that environment?
Another theme I'm seeing latley in the news is the lack of personal Responsibility these days, everything is governed by the Blame Game; who is responsible for my pain and can I Sue them for it?
Question is, how much of a child's development can be blamed on society? On Parental Style or even on plain Genetics?
And why the heck are we so damn complex...?...8P

Malachy_Sunblade wrote:

At this point, one begins to wonder at the realism of the view that says that a person is a product of their environment.  Genetically and socially these beings are created, but many serial killers and violent personages come from perfectly respectable homes, which puts a great deal of lie to the "environment" arguments made in psychology classes around the globe *grins slightly*.

Serial killers and violent personages are two completely different phenomenons. Violent personages may fall under the nature or nurture argument which can sway wildly either way for many reasons, but a large portion of stable, functioning serial killers (not the sloppy ones that get caught, but the ones that law enforcement estimates to be out there and working) are of a different psychology all together.

Trying to create a unified theory of serial killers is not something that has been successful to date and the psychological profiles are often skewed towards unstable, non-social, dysfunctional, devolving persons.

The challenge has been to try to uncover the psychology of the functional ones that go completely unnoticed, often for a lifetime, and are only rarely discovered by happenstance. To date this has been largely unsuccessful due to the fact that so few are caught and studied. Only by supposition have these people been profiled.

Part of the problem in trying to catch these theoretical beings is that the wrong profile is used for them. You can't hunt for something if you don't know what it is and how it functions (well, at least not as easily.) What has come to light about 'caught' non-social serial killers is that they shed very little light on the 'uncaught' socially stable serial killers. And there lies the downfall of the whole profile, allowing large numbers of killers to function under the radar for long periods of time. I know of at least two functioning over long periods, uncaught, in the region I live in right now.


Serial killers are a small, elite group of 'monsters', while violent people are a large group of 'people' and  'freaks' that abuse family members or others are not rare at all. The problem inherent in the nature and nurture theory is that both feed off each other and few people like to walk the gray areas of such realities, preferring the absolutism of black and white arguments. It isn't black and white, it never is.


What it comes down to is that, as Ren mentioned, we are so damn complex. :)