Austrian town in shock over abuse

By Sylvia Westall

AMSTETTEN, Austria (Reuters) - When he looks across the road from his shop to the house which has brought notoriety to a small town in Austria, Guenter Haller feels a chill.

"This is the friendliest town I've ever lived in. It is a complete shock to know that such a man lived across the road and did those horrible things to his daughter," the 42-year-old glazing salesman from Amstetten said on Monday.

"How the other tenants did not see anything escapes me."

Beneath the drab grey housing block Haller looks out on is the cellar where a 73-year-old imprisoned his daughter for 24 years along with some of her seven children he fathered.

The horrors have only now been discovered after one of the three captive children, a 19-year-old girl, fell seriously ill and had to be rushed to hospital.

The bustling and prosperous industrial town of Amstetten, in rolling hills 130 km (80 miles) west of Vienna, is in shock.

Josef Fritzl has confessed he lured his daughter Elisabeth, 42, into the basement of their block in 1984 and drugged, handcuffed and imprisoned her.

The building is on one of the town's busiest streets, lined with cafes, a florist and home decoration shops.