Mad world
Which would you consider more shocking—the art student who got herself pregnant several times over a nine-month period and aborted the pregnancies so she could put the fetal blood in an art exhibit or the father who locked up his 18-year-old daughter in a basement, kept her a prisoner for 24 years, raped her regularly and fathered her seven children?
It was the case of the Yale art student that I read about first. Aliza Shvarts of Yale University underwent artificial insemination several times then took drugs to abort the fetuses. Art, she said. She was scheduled to stage an exhibit about a week ago featuring the babies she killed. I first came across her story in the Web log of a mommy-blogger who, months after suffering a miscarriage, is still grieving over her loss. She said it was insulting that Shvarts called what she underwent as miscarriages.
Jaw-dropping concept of art, no doubt. I was still getting over the feeling of shock and amazement when I read about the 73-year-old Austrian named Josef Fritzl. Back in 1967 when Fritzl was already married, he raped a 24-year-old woman at knife point. He was convicted and served an 18-month prison term.
Fritzl lived in a house in Ybbsstrasse with his wife and children. In 1978, he secured permits to extend his cellar. Above this extension is a structure that had been subdivided into apartments which Fritzl rented out. In 1984 when his daughter Elizabeth was 18, he brought her into the cellar, drugged her and raped her. She wouldn’t see the outside of that cellar until 24 years later. That was where she gave birth to seven children, one of whom died.
It gets even stranger. Fritzl reported her daughter missing after forcing her to write a note to her mother telling her not to try to find her. She was supposed to have run away to join some sect. But for the duration of her disappearance, she was also supposed to have stolen into the house three times, leaving a baby at the doorstep each time. These three children, hers and her father’s, were legally adopted into the Fritzl household.
The horror ended after the secret cellar was discovered. Elizabeth and her seven children are now under psychiatric care. Meanwhile, Fritzl is facing criminal charges and his lawyer is already talking about a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
For the layman, it would seem that the lawyer’s strategy makes sense. Obviously, Fritzl is insane—what kind of father would do that to his own daughter? In fact, what kind of human being would be capable of such inhumane acts? One has to be deranged to do that and to keep doing that for 24 years.
But the reality is that a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity has nothing to do with the mental condition of the abused. Legal insanity is not the same as psychiatric insanity. The test is whether the accused knew that what he did was wrong because the law punishes the act or acts he committed.
The test of legal insanity has a long history. It was in the case of McNaghten (also spelled M’Naghten or McNaughton) where there was a first attempt at setting a standard on how to deal with mentally incompetent persons accused of a crime. Daniel M’Naghten was accused of the attempted assassination of British Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843.
The M’Naghten Rule has been interpreted, re-interpreted, analyzed and re-analyzed since and subsequent court decisions have laid down some significant clarifications:
(1) The insanity or “disease of the mind” must be something internal to the body of the accused but need not be permanent. Hence, crimes committed while sleepwalking and epileptic attacks have been generally held to fall within the insanity rule.
(2) The accused’s mental condition was such that he did not know what he was doing; and
(3) At the time of the commission of the crime, the accused was not aware that the act he committed was legally wrong (i.e., punishable by law).
Fritzl is said to have suffered abuse as a child in the hands of his mother. Few will object to the popular belief that child abuse leave scars that never truly heal throughout the victim’s life. But is that enough to sustain a defense of insanity? People who have known Fritzl during his adult life have been interviewed and none of them really found any cause to question Fritzl’s sanity. He has been described as “decent, outgoing and, above all, amusing bloke.” Former tenants described strange things—food disappearing from their apartments, electrical consumption even when all the appliances have been turned off, for instance—but nothing so extraordinary in Fritzl’s behavior as to make them entertain the possibility that he was anything but normal.
One has to think about long-term repercussions of creating precedents where an accused goes scot-free because of things he has suffered in the past. Every adult had suffered from one painful experience or another. Prolonged and sustained suffering is not always necessary; sometimes, a singular event can make the mind snap. If every accused will require the legal system to consider some past suffering, no one will ever be held liable for his crimes.
A third of what’s been written about me is true, a third is half-true and the rest consists of drug-induced hallucinations. I suppose I’d better let me, rather than them, tell you 
23 responses to "Mad world"
OMG! i was appaled when i read this news. how could anyone do such a thing, moreso to their own daughter. This man is really insane! Come to think of it, if its only sex that he wanted, there are other means for him to get it, i mean prostitution is quite rampant here in Europe (even legal in some countries), at least it would be consensual. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the suffering of the kids and Elizabeth (the daughter) in those 24 years.
If you Google Josef Fritzl, you’ll find links to hundreds of news reports. Some of them describe the condition of the children, the oldest of whom is said to be suffering from some congenital condition associated with incest. She is “fighting for her life.”
I first came across this article from Ipanema. Truly appalling.
nakakabulabog
These two are sira ulo talaga. They should be in the same cell in prison.
both nakakalungkot at nakakatakot yang Fritzl case. pero masa karimarimarim yang abortion for Art’s sake. siraulo yang mga yan pareho. pero sana hindi excuse ang plead of insanity to evade punishment of crime committed. hayyy…minsan yang ganyan kay Fritzl, kung iisipin, yang mga ginawa niya all those years, kahit tadtarin siya ng pino at ipakain sa baboy ang kanyang meat..hindi pa rin enough na bayad sa kanyang ginawa. dapt yung asawa niya kasuhan din, i really believe she is an accessory of some sorts to the crime. hayyy…
Isn’t he the same guy who kidnapped this other schoolgirl and kept her for years, too? Ganun kasi ang intindi ko sa napanood ko sa news a few nights ago.
Hehe iba pala yung lalaki dun sa isa pang case.
You may blame the wife in Fritz case, but she probably was brainwashed and threatened by the husband. …To all women out there - if this happens to you or anybody you know, report it to proper authorities right away.
Gloria, he should be sent to Sweeney Todd? hehe
Nagulat naman ako sa iyo, Ria hehehe
Jaime, there was one report that described the wife as having been raised in a generation where women did not question their husbands — they obeyed.
We have Filipino friends that were like this before. They were afraid of their husbands. Even if they were abused, they don’t want to report them. One finally got her revenge. They went home to the Philippines to retire. When the husband died, she did not follow his wishes of bringing him back to the States to be buried - he had two daughters living in the States from his previous marriage.
I told my wife that if I die, she and the kids don’t have to obey me anymore. Just kidding.
Connie that was really shocking but this one is very embarrassing, Three months ago A Filipino overseas worker rape and murdered a 13yearsold Korean girl in Ansan a city near seoul where he planned to commit the crime many months ahead.What is embarrassing here is when the news caster commented that their children were no longer safe because of the foreign guest workers.aaaaaah….
I cannot for the life of me imagine how Fritzl got away with all of this without his wife knowing. It’s too… eerie and espionage like.
Parang pang-sine talaga eh. Truth is stranger than fiction, really, in this case!
I saw the headline from yahoo news and tried to avoid reading it because I don’t want to be affected.Then after a few days my husband told me the whole story over bedtime conversations and it brought me nightmares for 3 consecutive nights. I’m traumatized!
This one has happened in the US. Though an isolated one, some would comment that it is because those in the jury and “da judge” happened to be the college graduating students during the time when liberalism is the thing. This is my personal opinion.
In Philippines, the same is true. Those in the news are not newscasters but are newscrafters. Just watch Ch 2, Ch 7, and Carandang in Ch 2 ’s sister station.
Just don’t hold in your hand anything of value while watching this *** in your TV.
I think it’s all over the world - no news is good news. Maybe, it’s time people need to think not just about themselves, but also to be aware of what is going in their neighborhood and environment.
hi po ma’am. thanks to your post, i looked up info on Aliza Shvarts and i came across this page, which says the whole “abortion art” idea is a hoax. aliza even produced evidence and such to prove that she underwent the abortions, but in the end it seems they never took place.
i dunno… stirring up that kind of controversy still doesn’t strike me as “art” though.
bhex, that denial was denied. Yale says it was fake because it didn’t want its name tarnished. See subsequent reports (published after April 18).
i just caught up on related reports in the yale daily (including aliza’s own explanation), mukha nga pong ginawa niya yun. holy sh*t.
Indescribable horror ba?
I FEEL ANGRY AND SAD. he’s definitely not insane coz if he does why bother to hid his daugther and her children from the world, he knows the right from wrong… I’M NO PRO DEATH sentence but in this case i may reconsider… hMMM …or not maybe life imprisonment bartolina style would do. MAD AND DANGEROUS WORLD talaga! it is time someone brings to light what mental illness really means and who is sane and insane. MASYADONG MARAMING ginagawang meaning para makalusot sa kasalanang ginawa, and shame sa lahat who had the guts to defend and make favorable views to alleviate the effects of such crimes. Justice for the victims. Mahirap pong magpalaki ng bata ngayon with the kind of world we’re in. I’m more happy if i don’t watch the news. Esp. now that i’m having preterm labor. : (
I have read both of these news. Reuters if I remember it.
So sad about the Fritzl case that nobody knew what was happening. Personally,I don’t subscribe that much to the concept of being the person you are now because of the trauma suffered in the past. People can overcome these things and be better persons, if they want to, if they try hard enough. Sana nga.
Loida, I feel angry and sad that lawyers are mostly responsible for making those interpretations that will make their clients “palusot” possible.
Julie, re “So sad about the Fritzl case that nobody knew what was happening.”
I can’t imagine how controlling a person Fritzl is that he could will his wife and children NOT TO NOTICE. I mean there was always a portion of the grocery that wasn’t consumed in the main house — that wasn’t strange? And then, the power consumption. And the fact that no one was allowed in the cellar.
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