Another win for Austria

Austria is a country that is roughly the size of Maine and I learned that from an exceedingly reliable source, Wiki Answers. Why not trust annoymous strangers when it comes to information I put on my blog? Slightly more reliably, the World Bank puts the population of Austra at about 8.4 million while the population in the US is just over 307 million. Austria has had two high profile cases of imprisonment of young girls in the last five years. Of course, the case of Josef Fritzl who held his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years and fathered three children with her; and the case of Wolfgang Priklopil who kidnapped 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch and held her for eight years before she escaped and he did everyone a favor by throwing himself under the wheels of a train and dying. The US has had two high profile cases, that of Jaycee Dugard kidnapped by Phillip Garrido, and Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby who were kidnapped four and a half years apart by Michael Devlin. Now, I'm too lazy to look up all the high profile child kidnapping and imprisonments in the United States but it does seem like maybe Austria has had a little more than their fair share.

I started thinking about this because of an article I read today about the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch.  I just want to remind you all that at the time she was TEN-YEARS-OLD.  You know what I was doing at ten?  Listening to Celine Dion and singing into my hair brush, playing Barbie, and fighting with my brother over who was going to get to play Mario in Mario Bros., and who was going to have to be the obviously less superior Luigi.  Anyway, apparently there are suspicions that she may have had a baby that she disposed over at some point during her time in captivity.  There are allegations of many different government officials colluding in a cover-up.  I'm not believe in infanticide but I'm not sure what investigators are hoping to accomplish?  First of all, there is a huge possibility that based on her age, lack of prenatal care, and delivering alone and at home that the baby was stillborn.  Second, when this happened SHE WAS A CHILD.  Alone, scared, and probably wishing to be playing with her dolls in the safety of her home.  Since she was imprisoned I have no idea how she would have even gotten out to get rid of a body.  She's also been accused of lying about her relatioship with her kidnapper.  Although officially he was a stranger to her, some investigators believe that he may have been a friend of the family.  In which case I say, so what?  So I guess since maybe he knew her then it was OK?  Maybe they were in on it together?  You know, since ten-year-olds are totally capable of making those decisions.  What are the authorities trying to prove?  It smacked to me of blaming the victim for the crime perpertrated on her by a person whose only contribution to society was killing himself. 

I think that we can all agree that, along with lederhosen and Kurt Waldheim, this is just another shining star for Austria.