Traumatised police to get counselling after sex dungeon family probe

Police examining the Austrian cellar dungeon where Josef Fritzl imprisoned and repeatedly raped his own daughter for decades, fathering seven children by her, are receiving psychological counselling.

Officers with years of experience of crime scenes were reportedly shocked to the core on entering one of the tiny rooms, to find pitiful drawings made by the three children in the fetid confined space that had been their prison since birth.

The detective leading the investigation, Franz Polzer, said: "What the officers had to look at down there was terrible."

He said going into the cellar was like climbing into an old submarine.

Small, dark and stifling, exposed pipes line the moisture-drenched walls.

From the very first room containing the kitchen and bathroom, investigators were left feeling sick.

The shower was covered in mould, and the toilet was in a "catastrophic" state, he said.

No door or curtain separated the bedrooms, meaning Fritzl, who now faces a murder charge, assaulted his daughter Elisabeth in clear view of their children.

Officers said the stench in the cellar was "almost unbearable".

Meanwhile, Fritzl says he has been too nervous to leave his cell for fear of other inmates extracting revenge on him for his crimes.

Arrested on April 27, he complained of feeling "isolated and alone" – and told lawyer Rudolf Mayer he wants his wife and children to visit him in jail.