The father had raped before at least one woman, and tried to rape another one. His daugther had tried to escape twice from home before getting locked up to the cellar but the police always returned her home. In Austria they remove sex offences from your criminal record after 10 years, so when the family seemed to be normal, no one though to question why she was trying to get away. When she got locked up, he told everyone she had joined some satanist group or something and I guess everyone just thought that she was being a rebel teenager.
It does seem questionable that his wife didn't know anything, since when he raped that other woman and got convicted, he was already married to and had 4 kids. Another thing was that he had applied for a permission to build the cellar into a place where his family could hide in case of an emergency. So why no one gave that place a check when Elisabeth had "ran away" once again when authorities knew it was there?
(Sorry for typos, am in a hurry..)
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