This story will break your heart -- but the neighbor was a hero.

[pnwmom]

This tragedy happened in Austria, but there's a lesson in here for us all -- if the neighbor hadn't been so persistent those girls might still be trapped in there.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1368918.ece

Three girls who were imprisoned by their mother in a house of indescribable filth for seven years may never recover from the ordeal, experts said last night.

The girls were shut away from the outside world, existing in almost complete darkness, playing only with mice and communicating in their own language.

When they were discovered, their home in a smart, upper middle-class suburb had no running water and was filled with waste and excrement a metre high. The floor was corroded by mice urine.

SNIP

The girls, Viktoria, Katharina and Elisabeth, were rescued only when police broke into the house after a neighbour, who had reported his suspicions several times, threatened a local council official with a lawsuit.

SNIP

[Pachamama]

1. Wow...this is awful...who knows if these girls will ever recover...

Obviously, the mother is seriously mentally disturbed....what I don't understand is why the father didn't just insist on going there to see the kids?

The article indicates that the mother (a lawyer) was working on her own defense....This seems strange that on the one hand we are supposed to believe she is so mentally incoherent, yet then fully able to handle aspects of her defense legally?

Anyway, the girls sound so damaged and I pray that they can have some sense of normalcy in their life....We hear about the damage that the torture has done to the minds of people like Jose Padilla, these girls have been put through similar....

So sad and tragic....ugh... :cry:

[JVS]

2. WTF is going on in Austria?

first the girl who was captured and raped for years and now this!

[MonkeyFunk]

3. two cases in 6 months is an epidemic?

OMG! Hitler was Austrian too!

[JVS]

4. thi is HUGH!!!!11!!!!

[MonkeyFunk]

5. Austria is well and truly

screwn.

[JVS]

6. Austrians need to stop acting like steroid fueled apes!

ahrnuld set a bad example

[Bluebear]

8. Bush may well invade Australia after this! nt

[wake.up.america]

7. Auf Deutsch, bitte

http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/news/2007/02/12/kinder-eingesperrt/mutter-maedchen.html