Incest suspect's lawyer defends insanity plea

VIENNA - A lawyer for Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave in an underground cellar for 24 years, defended his client's likely insanity plea on Monday.
'I believe that someone who is said to have committed such a crime is psychologically ill,' Rudolf Mayer said in an interview with AFP.
'And if someone is psychologically ill, then they must be examined by an expert to determined whether the illness is so far progressed that they cannot be held responsible.'
His client, Fritzl has been remanded in custody since last week after he told police he imprisoned and sexually abused his daughter for more than two decades in a specially-built bunker underneath the family home.
A total of seven children were born out of that abuse, three of whom were kept incarcerated in the 60-square-metre (645-square-feet) cellar.
Another three were legally adopted by Fritzl and lived with him in the house upstairs. The seventh child died shortly after birth and Fritzl told investigators he disposed of the body in a wood-fired boiler in the cellar.
The case has sparked shock and outrage in Austria, triggering widespread debate about tougher sentences for sex criminals.
Mayer rejected suggestions that an insanity plea was a way for Fritzl to get himself off the hook.
'It's about finding out what really happened,' he said. 'This is not just a strategy of mine' to get Fritzl a shorter sentence, Mayer insisted. 'In these sorts of cases, the question of responsibility is asked automatically.'
Neither would such a plea be a way for Fritzl to be released earlier, the lawyer continued.
'A psychiatric commission meets once a year to discuss whether someone can continue to be classified as dangerous or not. In cases such as this one, it can be assumed that the commission will not release a person, not least because of their advanced age. They'll be all the more difficult to treat,' Mayer said.
'I can't imagine that the commission will simply give him a clean bill of health after a few years.'
The lawyer said he had met his client three times last week and would see him again this week.
'I believe I've succeeded in winning his confidence,' he said.
The head of the prison where Fritzl is being detained described him as an 'unproblematic inmate: he's calm, collected and alert.'
However, Fritzl was refusing to take the daily one-hour walk allowed in the prison yard. 'He doesn't want to go out,' prison director Guenther Moerwald told the Austrian news agency APA.
A psychiatrist examined Fritzl on Friday and decided the father did not have suicidal tendencies, the prison chief said.
Thomas Mueller one of Austria's best-known criminologists said Fritzl was a typical case of a 'malignant narcissist'.
The malignant narcissist could only increase their own self-value by oppressing others. 'They lock them in or inflict pain on them. The perpetrator wants to be seen as powerful,' said Mueller, who trained as a profiler with the FBI in the United States.
'To me, it's as if they have a black hole inside them. With every sadistic act, they try to fill that hole. But every time they do something, the hole just gets bigger,' Mueller said in an interview with Austrian public radio Oe3.
Asked why the criminal therefore persisted with the crime, Mueller explained: 'For a short time, they experience a feeling of relief. They have the feeling they have power over life and death. But then the perpetrator sees that there are some things that didn't fit in with their fantasies. So they seek out another victim.'
'Sexually abusing your own child is about power, because you're exercising control,' Mueller said. 'It's easy to control a young, weak child. But when the child grows up, there's an increased danger that they'll rebel.
'So the perpetrator has to think pragmatically, such as building a bunker to lock the victim in.'
By making their captives totally dependent on them, they feel increased self-worth every time they bring them food, Mueller said.