[Private]

Experts reveal that one in six girls in Austria abused at home

The unfathomable crime of Josef Fritzl has prompted experts to reveal that incestuous abuse is a regular occurrence in Austrian families.

Charlotte Aykler, the head of Violence Prevention Centre, an NGO dealing with victims of family violence that is also active in Amstteten, claims that incest and sexual abuse in Austrian families are widespread.

Mrs Aykler said: “Every sixth girl and every ninth boy has experienced sexual violence within their families. But it is always connected to much, much shame, and children are simply not speaking about it.” According to Mrs Aykler, the figures are based on the moderate estimates by experts dealing with the subject, but the real numbers could be drastically higher.

In Austria the number of cases involving “severe sexual abuse of minors” has risen to 296 in 2007 – an increase of 20 per cent compared with the previous year, while there were 313 cases of “sexual abuse of minors”. That is only the number of cases that have been reported to the police.

Ursula Puchebner, the deputy mayor of Amstetten, criticised the many witnesses, including neighbours and lodgers, who have come forward to speak of how they knew that Mr Fritzl was abusing his daughter before he locked her up in his cellar in 1984, when she was 19. She said: “They are now all in the public spotlight, but before [the case was revealed] no one seemed to notice anything unusual.”

Lydia Gouardo, 45, the French incest victim who was sexually abused by her stepfather and gave birth to six children, said that she would like to travel to Austria and meet Elisabeth Fritzl.

“I would like to meet her, and tell her my story and how I came to terms with it.” Mrs Guardo was raped and kept hostage by her stepfather from 1971 until his death in 1999.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 872374.ece

"experts to reveal that incestuous abuse is a regular occurrence in Austrian families"

wtf is wrong with Austrians?

[Nets]

wtf is wrong with Austrians?

WTF is wrong with your posts.

Why do you always generalize anecdotal events across demographic groups?

Child/Sexual abuse happens everywhere; I'm willing to wager it occurs far less in Austria then in Africa for example.

[Private]

^ Austria is part of the "western civilization". The other countries you speak of are backwards. See the differance?

[Goranhammer]

But here's the real question: How can we link this atrocity to "teh jooz"?

Get to work, Private.

[Rodion]

I doubt this is exceptional to any part of the world. People just aren't as civilized as they would like to believe.

[Zyx]

It is already linked in the other thread that 1/5 people in the U.S. are sexually abused. Also, according to a forum poster who said that car causalities are three times as likely , 3/5 of the US population was killed by automobiles (the poster never retracted its statements.) This said, I think that we should focus more on automobiles than child sexual abuse.

Look here. This quote pertains to the US

It is difficult to determine how common child sexual abuse is. It is often more secret than physical abuse. Children are often scared to tell someone about the event. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, it is reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the actual number of unreported events is probably much higher.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007224.htm

Prevalence research for the USA shows that approximately 20% to 25% of women and 5% to 15% of men experienced some form of sexual abuse when they were children.[9][10][11][12]Most sexual abuse offenders are acquainted with their victims; approximately 30% of abusers are relatives of the child, most often fathers, uncles or cousins; around 60% of child sexual abusers are other acquaintances such as friends of the family, babysitters, or neighbors; strangers are the offenders in approximately 10% of child sexual abuse cases. Whether the victim is a boy or a girl, men perpetrate the majority of child sexual abuse; women perpetrate approximately 14% of offenses reported against boys and 6% of offenses reported against girls.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Sexual_Abuse

That is for the U.S.

If anything, this thread should be focused on automobile casualties and further Austria should not be condemned but given the thumbs up.

If we take a functionalist perspective, the U.S. just has a worse rating overall.

[SpiderMonkey]

Austria has been unfortunately singled out, but the fact is the entirety of human civilisation is riddled with abuse, and most of it is underreported.

[Verv]

Most societies I imagine are similar. The amount of general abuse that exists I guess is not a regular conversation topic so we really do not get exposed to a lot of the truth.

I also feel some numbers can be inflated. For a long time people were tossing around the entire 1 in 4 women in their lives will at some point be sexually assaulted . I am not sure how accurate that is and I am not sure how 'sexual assault' is defined.

Humans are pretty much the same everywhere and I really do not think it is fair to believe that there would be something so culturally different amongst Austrians (of all people) that would cause it to be higher amongst them.

[Epicurus]

The only reason Austria is getting all these heat about incest and sexual abuse within their families is because of the guy who was just caught. If you check the statistics on other countries child sexual abuse is just as prevalent in them as it is in Austria, it all depends on the media and which situations they decide to present to the masses as an example.

[amanamuse]

Austria is part of the "western civilization". The other countries you speak of are backwards. See the differance?

Africa is not a country, and you misspelled "difference".

On a note completely unrelated to inexcusable misspellings and inexplicable geographical errors, is your avatar a picture of you?

As for the "content" of the post, I can't think of any reason that incest would be more common in Austria than any other country. Was this article properly researched?

[Epicurus]

I think it just wasn't put into perspective and compared to the rates of other countries. I will grant that other countries aren't having all this media attention placed on their sexual abuse statistics, but that is just because of the extremes that the man who was recently caught, Friztl, went to to conceal his daughter. It's just a completely bizarre situation but it does not mean all Austrians should be stereotyped as incest-loving pedophiles.

[Goddess]

I believe that many girls and women have been taught by society that they have been 'abused' when they really haven't. They re-interpret, in adulthood, the hugs, kisses, and carresses of their fathers as 'sexual fondling' because they have been brainwashed by our sexaully repressive puritanical society to think of all touching by men as sexual and abusive.

I also believe that they 're-interpret', in adulthood, the normal sex-play that children experience as 'sexual abuse' or 'sexual fondling' by their siblings. Everything sexual is pathologised in our sexually conservative society.

Then there are many cases of accidental touching of private areas by their relatives, which, in adulthood, they 're-interpret' as sexual fondling.

Then it must be rememebred that we live in a society based on victimhood. People like to be seen and to think of themselves as victims.

Combine all of the above - normal sex play between children, accidental touching, reintrepations of loving touches as 'sexual', etc. - and you get preposterous statistical figures, like "1 in 6 girls sexually abused".

[Zyx]

Austria has been unfortunately singled out, but the fact is the entirety of human civilisation is riddled with abuse, and most of it is underreported.

Abuses are not a natural phenomenon and so this comment should be specific to that effect. Certain portions of Africa may have little, if any, sexual abuse while others maybe not so. The thing about Austria is that it is a patriarchal society empowered by capitalism to be abusive in this manner. That said, it's rather silly of the rulers to show us the faults of their ideology.

All the same, it is important to speak on the causes as opposed to the symptoms. I had sat in on a discussion of that earlier discovered abuse and one of the devil's advocates, figuratively, promoted the idea of a more public manner of child rearing. I happened to agree . . . this Austrian case most has to deal with the disempowered youth and the privacy of the household.

Maybe children need confidants or public journals that encourage this sort of discussion. Let's take the power away from the adults!

[QatzelOk]

I think that we should focus more on automobiles than child sexual abuse.

But it's so much easier to point the finger at sex crimes than it is to stop killing so many children with our cars, Kumatto.

And we are looking for the easiest moral convictions - the most convenient morality - we can muster.

[Verv]

I believe that many girls and women have been taught by society that they have been 'abused' when they really haven't. They re-interpret, in adulthood, the hugs, kisses, and carresses of their fathers as 'sexual fondling' because they have been brainwashed by our sexaully repressive puritanical society to think of all touching by men as sexual and abusive.

You know this is also rather true.

I could interpret a lot of things Korean men have done to me on the subways and in the workplace as sexual harassment or assault. But over here... It's just a friendly grabbing onto the leg or backrub. It hurts no one and it feels good and you don't even have to feel uncomfortable.

We have went from a society where people were allowed to have an amount of personal contact to one where people fear contact.

May God have mercy on us.

[QatzelOk]

We have went from a society where people were allowed to have an amount of personal contact to one where people fear contact.

I agree, Verv. We went from criminalizing homosexuality in the 19th Century to criminalizing all physical contact in the 20th. Rape laws were originally intended to protect virgin women for their husbands. Now they are used to ostracize men who show affection.

And women wonder why so many men are callous jock assholes. It's the only way to be that's still legal.

Likewise, adult males who show affection for children are always suspected of pedophilia.

[PBVBROOK]

I agree, Verv. We went from criminalizing homosexuality in the 19th Century to criminalizing all physical contact in the 20th. Rape laws were originally intended to protect virgin women for their husbands. Now they are used to ostracize men who show affection.

And women wonder why so many men are callous jock assholes. It's the only way to be that's still legal.

Likewise, adult males who show affection for children are always suspected of pedophilia.

Oh my God!

I actually agree with this post Quatz. Wow.

To go on.

The charge of "abuse" has lost its meaning. We have so watered down the concept that I would question any dubious statistic like the One in 6 quoted above.

I suspect.....'taint so.

[Verv]

Qatz is right on about that.

I knew a guy who took some orphans out to a theme park for the day and bought them ice cream and spoiled them rotten.. Later some girl said that seems really 'funny' and 'odd' as if she suspected him of being a ped...

Adult men can hardly even engage in charitable acts towards impoverished children without suspicion.

[Zyx]

There is no exaggeration. What's with you people?

1/6 is an underestimate if anything.

Has no one here really ever seen anything close to child sexualization in their local area?

[amanamuse]

1/6 is an underestimate if anything.

You have some sort of supporting evidence for this statement, I presume.