I think that after the case has gone to court we will all get the true story.

What I thought though was that everyone knew about the cellar but that it was considered his domain.

An Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years insisted he was "no monster", as over 500 residents of his town staged a rally in support of the victims.

While the government in Vienna agreed to take a tougher line on sex crimes, Josef Fritzl, in comments passed by his lawyer to the tabloid newspaper Oesterreich, insisted he was "no monster."

Fritzl, 73, claimed credit for having saved the life of his daughter and added: "I could have killed them all. Then there would have been no trace. No-one would have found me out."

The prosecution, which interviewed the suspect Wednesday for the first time since his arrest at the beginning of last week, said it found Fritzl to be "cooperative" and "ready to talk".

Spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek said the interview with investigating prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser in St. Poelten prison where Fritzl is being held, lasted "about one and a half hours" although Fritzl was not yet questioned directly about the accusations.

"The interview focussed on his personal history, his professional career, et cetera," the spokesman said.

In the comments published by Oesterreich, Fritzl claimed he had saved the life of the eldest of the six surviving children born from the sexual abuse.

Nineteen-year-old Kerstin, who was born in the cramped dungeon where Fritzl held his daughter prisoner and was never allowed out, was rushed to hospital on April 19 with multiple organ failure, which doctors suggest could be a result of her incarceration.

She has since been in an artificially-induced coma and put on a life-support machine.

It was Kerstin's hospitalisation that triggered the events which led to the discovery of the shocking abuse case. But Fritzl said: "If it weren't for me, Kerstin wouldn't be alive today."

He added: "It was me who made sure she was taken to hospital."

Police say the retired electrician has admitted that he locked away his daughter Elisabeth, now 42, when she was just 18 and repeatedly raped her, forcing her to bear seven children in all.

Three children spent their entire life underground with their mother, never seeing sunlight, while three were raised by Fritzl and his wife as their "grandchildren" in the family home upstairs. The seventh child died shortly after birth.

The case has sparked widespread calls for tougher punishment for rapists and paedophiles.

On Wednesday, the government cabinet promptly agreed a package of measures to combat sex crime, which will come into force next year if adopted.

They included keeping criminal records of convicted sex offenders on file for much longer, banning convicted sex criminals from carrying out certain professions, and not allowing them to adopt children.

Under current Austrian law, criminal records are expunged after no longer than 15 years, depending on the severity of the crime.

The Fritzl case has raised questions about the practice after reports suggested the 73-year-old had been convicted of sex crimes back in the 1960s, but those convictions had since been wiped from his record.

When police carried out routine background checks on Fritzl when he reported his daughter missing 24 years ago, his record was technically clean, as it was when he applied to adopt three of the children born out of the abuse.

Under the new proposals, the time period will now be extended to 30 years for sex offenders and serious offences would no longer be wiped at all, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said.

Meanwhile the rally, in Amstetten's town square, aimed to show solidarity with Elisabeth Fritzl and the children she bore with her father during her captivity, but also to remind residents that they "as a community, did not fail", said spokesman Hermann Gruber.

"This was one man," Margarete Reisinger, 68, said. "I'm proud to be from Amstetten."

Schoolchildren unrolled a dozen banners with messages of solidarity for the victims but also of criticism to the media for its vilification of the small town.

"We in Amstetten can't help that we had such a person among us, but the whole world is watching us," said Robert Schiller, 68.

"This Amstetten we see today, that's the real Amstetten," Gruber told the crowd calling for "a return to normality in our town and in our province."

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=458990

Anyone here agree with him?

As for Fritzl himself, it's often said that psychopaths view other people as dolls or as characters in a play, as not fully real - and that seems to be part of what he was doing, playing doll-house with real live dolls. I suppose it really is to his credit that in the end he had enough of a spark of human connection not to let his daughter/granddaughter die, she was real enough to him for that. But perhaps the fact that he did have at least some ability to see other people as real and valuable makes him more culpable.

I think that after the case has gone to court we will all get the true story.

What I thought though was that everyone knew about the cellar but that it was considered his domain.