Elisabeth fritzl now plus#

Most likely they didn't check into the kids because with no reported missing babies in the area, and he being respected in the community, they believed him. It’s horrible and tragic and scary and brutal that Elizabeth lived through this, but if you start creating barriers on a system because of one awful edge case, think of all the kids that might suffer because of it. It also makes no sense to catch an incident like this, because this shit, statistically speaking, neeeeeeeever happens. Your scenario only makes sense in a world with unlimited resources and very few kids in need of placement outside their parents’ guardianship. What would they do? “Oh, you have a letter from your daughter and some recordings saying it’s her baby, you want to take guardianship, but we’re going to force you to do a DNA test, which may be backlogged.” Such a waste of resources when you have good evidence to suggest the mom abandoned her kid with her parents who want to take care of the kid. If “they” (I presume you mean the state?) required you to prove blood relations before taking in an abandoned child, the system would be so much worse than it already is. Why? Regardless of the fact that DNA testing was stupid expensive and not as accessible back then… Think of all the kids in foster care or who get dumped on the streets. He took those children in as foster children, presenting a - at this time - believable story about his daughter. This happened in a small city in Lower Austria (population at that time roughly about 22.000 people) in the 1980-2000s as this was only afterwards known as one of the first widely known cases of incest & imprisonment, nobody would have thought to contradict the pater familias Fritzl. Nobody was going to contest this, especially as the 'runaway' daughter was not to be found. He convinced authorities through this so called 'evidence' that those children where his 'grandchildren': 'evidence' that the daughter left her children 'willingly' at her parents ( alleged phone calls & letters). And they (or him) were not interested in objecting the story Fritzl has concocted (story = daughter ran away, joined a 'cult' and didn't want to be contacted).įritzl had a good social standing in his immediate community & was convincing enough when confronted by authorities. You are looking at this case from a modern perspective and are overestimating Austrian youth welfare services/CPS and their abilities: This was Lower Austria/Amstetten in the 80/90s.The only people who would have cared about the relation between child & the Fritzls were.Fritzl and his wife. If they even could get specific percentages at that point to determine exactly what degree of relative.Īgreed with other commenters that you’re seeing this through very modern eyes and with a lot of 20/20 hindsight. Since the tests in 1990 were not the tech of today, rudimentary testing of either grandparent prob would have only checked whether the baby could be included or excluded as a familial match without scrutinizing it further.

Elisabeth fritzl now plus#

Hypothetically if authorities back then had reason to suspect something was going on (which they didn’t, the family had plausible explanations and there were no missing babies reported in the area plus “my fuck up of a kid dumped their baby on us to raise” isn’t exactly uncommon) and if those authorities had the manpower and technology available to DNA test all babies dumped on family members every single time just in case (which they didn’t because DNA testing in the late 80s and early 90s was very new, time consuming, expensive, not widely available, and reserved for known crimes- it was a forensic field after all), and hypothetically if they did test the grandma even using the best DNA tech available now… it would have just shown that she was indeed the grandmother of the child. Related Subs and Links: The Crime Newsroom Discord /r/UnresolvedMysteries /r/RedditCrimeCommunity /r/ColdCases Directory of Crime Subreddits Crime Custom Feed Follow the Reddit content policy at all times.YouTube or Podcast posts are allowed if your account meets our requirements.

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