Austrian police have arrested a 73-year-old man believed to have imprisoned his daughter in a windowless basement for 24 years. The woman told police she gave birth to seven children after being repeatedly raped by her father during her captivity.
The 42-year-old woman, identified as Elizabeth F., was missing since 1984, and was found by authorities in the town of Amstetten Saturday following a tip, Lower Austria police said in a statement.
The woman told police that she had been abused by her father since age 11, and was locked in her room in the cellar on Aug. 28, 1984.
Police said the woman's father, known as Josef, was in custody and told them how to enter the basement prison using a secret code.
"There is not only one, but a number of rooms: one room to sleep in, one to cook, and there are also sanitation facilities," Franz Polzer, head of the criminal investigations unit in the province of Lower Austria, told broadcaster ORF.
The U.K newspaper, The Guardian, is reporting that Josef's wife, Rosemarie, did not know where her daughter was and had assumed Elizabeth had voluntarily disappeared when her parents received a letter from her saying not to look for her.
As for the seven children Elizabeth gave birth to, police said one died after childbirth, and three were taken into Josef's house.
"Apparently, Josef arranged for the children to have the proper papers on them when they were left in the building, and forced the mother to write the accompanying letters," Polzer told a news conference.
"The father seems to be very authoritarian and decided what happened and what was supposed to happen in the family -- and today we know why he very closely guarded the basement."
The three other children were aged 19, 18 and the youngest was 5. They had been locked up with their mother since birth, never receiving sunlight or an education, police said.
Police have said that the woman appeared to be "greatly disturbed" during questioning. She agreed to talk only after she was assured she would no longer have any contact with her father and that her children would be taken care of.
The Guardian is reporting that the case only came to light after the oldest child, a girl, became seriously ill. She was dropped off at a hospital last weekend and hospital authorities appealed for her mother to come forward with details of her daughter's medical history.
Josef then brought Elizabeth and her two other children out of the dungeon, telling his wife that his daughter had chosen to return home, police said.
"This is not a mother abandoning her child which then had to be admitted to hospital in a serious condition ... We know that she herself has been kept imprisoned by her own father for 24 years in the basement and furthermore she obviously was also subjected to sexual abuse," Polzer said.
Sunday's news has reminded Austrians of another shocking case in 2006, where a young woman escaped an underground dungeon in a quiet Vienna suburb where she was held for more than eight years.
Natascha Kampusch was 10 years old when she was kidnapped in Vienna on her way to school in March 1998. Her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, threw himself in front of a train just hours after her dramatic escape.
With files from The Associated Press
