One of the worst elements of the Amstetten crimes is that they are so shocking, so off the scale, that forgiveness and justice are rendered impotent.
It would be inconceivable that Elizabeth Fritzl could ever be able to countenance forgiving her father. That she could find it in her heart to not hold it against him. That he was a damaged man acting under impulses he couldn’t control. No it’s all too premeditated and calculated for that.
The gravity and depravity of the man’s deeds are such that forgiveness seems too costly for his victim, someone who has already paid such a high price already.
Justice is weakened as he is a 73 year old who has had a long fulfilling life enjoying himself doing what he likes best, controlling and dominating those around him. For a man who is now eliciting sympathy with the line ‘oh well at least I didn’t kill them” a prison sentence in his last years is surely nothing more than a time out. Even the death penalty doesn’t cut it. Its surely better that he pays in time and is imprisoned with his freedom curtailed like his victim offspring.
But I feel there should be something more. My feeling is that there needs to be, in every country, an exceptional space in the justice system for crimes that are so unprecedented, so heinous, that a public execution is the ultimate sanction. That way there is humiliation for those monstrous perpetrators in their perverse denial. Justice is seen done and a message to goes out society at large that evil can be and will be reckoned with.
But then in our baying for blood it makes monsters of us all.
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