There would undoubtedly have been the same lurid coverage but the Nazi theory may have been just a little harder to sell.

And it’s unlikely that ‘cellar-watch’ would have been advocated as a solution to prevent such crimes from happening again.

In their coverage of the Fritzl case the Sun has made some pretty sweeping generalisations about the Austrian nation as a whole.

The sad fact is that every country has it’s sadists and by sensationalising the story the Sun has actually trivialised it. They have turned Fritzl and his family into characters from a horror film.

It’s all to easy to sit in judgement and declare “That would never happen here”. Unfortunately atrocities can be committed anywhere.