'It was as if we had just landed on the Moon': the first faltering steps into the outside world

I am sure most people are by now aware of the story of Josef Fritzl, the man who kept his own daughter in a dungeon for 24 years and repeatedly raped her producing seven children.

It's too horrendous to even discuss. However, what has interested me is how his children, who have been kept from daylight all of their lives, have reacted to their sudden freedom.

The Independent today carries a report from the policemen who were there at the time of their release.

Leopold Etz, the head of Lower Austria's murder commission, was the first officer to set eyes on the frightened, ashen-faced Fritzl boys, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, who had spent their whole lives underground. "They both looked terrified and were terribly pale," he said. "The two boys were taken upstairs from the underground bunker and appeared overawed by the daylight they had never experienced before.

"The real world was completely alien to them," Mr Etz said, "Later on that evening, we had to drive them to hospital. We had to drive very slowly with them because they cringed at every car light and every bump. It was as if we had just landed on the Moon," he added.

The boys were said to be able to communicate quite well in German, although their use of language and speech was far from normal. "They did not speak much in the bunker," said Dr Berthold Kepplinger, the director of the clinic where they are being cared for.

"Most of the speech they heard came from a television that was on in the cellar most of the time," he added. Both were said to be at risk from vitamin D deficiency resulting from lack of sunlight.

I have been telling myself that the five year old, at least, has some chance of recovering from his ordeal, working on the theory that he is young enough to put all of this behind him, however, psychologists do not appear to share my optimistic outlook even for him.

Psychologists were almost unanimous in their view that the ordeal suffered by Elisabeth, Kerstin, Stefan and Felix would mark them indefinitely. "The four will never be able to live normal lives. I am afraid it is too late for that," Bernd Prosser, a clinical psychologist told Austrian television. However, the reunion of the Fritzl family members was described by doctors as an "astonishing success". The older children found it relatively easy to make contact. Only five-year-old Felix was said to have clung anxiously to his mother's legs.

Newspapers in the UK often use the term "shocking" to describe events which are horrible, but actually not shocking at all. We are so cynical that it is very rare that something happens which genuinely shocks us.

I have found the story of what transpired in Austria to be truly shocking. And stories coming out today, in which Fritzl threatened to turn the cellar into a gas chamber if his daughter and her children attempted to escape, only adds to one's sense of utter astonishment and revulsion.

I really was hoping that some of them might be able to rebuild their lives; but, sadly, people who know much more about psychology than I do say that this will prove to be impossible.

It's got to be the saddest story that I have read in years. And yes, it is shocking.

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Tags: Josef Fritzl, kidnap, Austria