A potential 15-year maximum sentence for an Austrian man accused of imprisoning and raping his own daughter for two decades is being called outrageous.
Austrian authorities have now confirmed that 73-year-old Joseph Fritzl, who fathered seven children by the daughter he kept in a dungeon and repeatedly raped for 24 years, had a prior conviction for sexual assault. Attorney Pat Trueman with the Alliance Defense Fund is the former head of the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. He says the fact that Fritzl faces a maximum sentence of only 15 years is an outrage. "He not only raped a woman, but he [also] raped his own daughter and he raped her as a child and kept her as a slave," says a disgusted Trueman. Under Austrian law, Fritzl can only be sentenced for the most severe of his crimes -- rape -- for which the maximum penalty is 15 years in prison. But authorities fear he could use an insanity plea to avoid any punishment. "This man, on the one offense of raping his own daughter, should be put away for a lifetime," argues Trueman. As far as an insanity plea, Trueman says sexual predators "usually groom the child before they molest them." He says they "learn the patterns of the child" and find where the children congregate. "And they can think through all this in order to commit the crime," he continues. "You have to wonder -- are they really insane?" Trueman says long sentences are necessary, not as much to punish the sex offender as to protect the public. And he argues that when light sentences are handed down, sexual predators feel as though they have a "get out of jail free" card. He says many U.S. states impose relatively light penalties on sexual predators -- and that policy needs to change, too, he states.
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