Fritzl probably made the older boy stay in the dungeon as a threat to Elizabeth.
What a tragic story...
I’m so saddened and disgusted by this story that I find it hard to talk about.
One thing that bothers me is the perp’s wife. I find it hard to believe that she never suspected that something strange was going on. Where were all those babies coming from? What was her husband doing down in the basement all the time?
And the neighbors, or the nurses at the hospital, noticed nothing? Very strange.
The problem here is that you run into the difficulty of separating legitimate cases of abuse with political cases of abuse such as Koresh and Waco. Bureaucrats do not differentiate, they follow directives and live only to protect their butts. Handing nothing more than the suspicion of abuse over to a bureacrat is basically enabling a prejudicial sentence of guilty. How many parents have lost custody of their children through allegations and the bureacratic need to support their existence by justifying those allegations? Bureaucrats are unrepentant idiots; observe the firing of the child porn librarian. The citizen MUST develop expertise in this and many other matters that effect the well being of the nation state. With the Internet this is possible. Online watchdog committees will become a branch of government.
What is needed is a Dr. Phil, or pop psychologist of your choosing, educating the public to differentiate between chargeable offenses and the busybody imperative.