Ever since Josef Fritzl, the authoritarian patriarch of a sprawling family in the north Austrian town of Amstetten, was discovered to have imprisoned his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Austria has been locked in an emotional debate over what could cause such a crime. Some have claimed Fritzl's sadism to be a vestige of Nazism's moral corruption, others that the psychological strain of living for years under the threat of nuclear destruction was to blame.

But on Wednesday, six months after Fritzl was arrested on suspicion of incest and abduction, leaked portions of a long awaited psychiatrist's report to prosecutors suggested that personal, rather than societal, causes are behind Frtizl's crimes. Fritzl's actions, the report said, can be partly attributed to the abuse he suffered as a child. "His story describes an unpredictable atmosphere with humiliating and unprovoked attacks from his mother," psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner wrote in her 130-page report. "His childhood made him susceptible to an emotional handicap; [he felt] the need to possess an entire human being."

Fritzl reportedly blamed his behavior not on his upbringing but an innate "evil streak" that he battled against his whole life. "I was born to rape and I held myself back for a relatively long time," Fritzl reportedly told Kastner. "I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter".

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1853330,00.html