Josef Fritzl trial: Daughter Elisabeth reveals beast’s sick sex acts as he forced her to view porn

He stared impassively at the video screen yesterday – unmoved as his daughter Elisabeth laid bare the chilling scale of his evil over nearly a third of a century.

Elisabeth, now 43, told how she had grown up with the dreams and ambitions of any typical schoolgirl.

Yet her twisted father Josef Fritzl began to destroy her childhood innocence at just 11, when he would take her into woods near their holiday home to molest her, inflicting grave internal injuries.

She went on to endure a 31-year hell until the shocking tale was uncovered last year.

Elisabeth, speaking via video-taped evidence, told how the attacks continued through her teenage years.

Fritzl would force her to look at pornography as he performed a sex act on himself.

She fled to Austrian capital Vienna but...

...he found her and dragged her back home to Amstetten.

Elisabeth’s years of captivity began on August 29, 1984, when as an 18-year-old he lured her to the cellar of their home, covered her mouth and then knocked her out with a drug.

She told how he would attack her in eerie silence several times a day, “kicking and beating her” and making her act out twisted scenes from porn movies.

In later years, after he had begun fathering her children, he would carry out attacks in front of them.

Around 3,000 rapes, all outlined in her harrowing diaries, were detailed in evidence to the court.

She also told jurors how Fritzl threatened to murder her and the kids if they tried to escape.

He also warned them that he had booby-trapped the dungeon, so that if they tried to flee they would be gassed or electrocuted “within minutes”.

Elisabeth recalled: “He would say, ‘If you do not do as I say, your treatment will get worse. And in any case you cannot escape out of the cellar’.”

She added: “He told me he would rather kill everyone than have someone succeed in escaping the cellar and the truth to come out.”

Elisabeth broke down in tears as he outlined the death of her two-day baby Michael in 1996. After the infant succumbed to breathing complications Fritzl callously incinerated the body in a stove in the house.

Elisabeth said he knew of the newborn baby’s torment in the hours after the birth. Yet he did nothing to save him in case it led to his hideous secret being discovered by local authorities.

She also gave an insight into the hellish conditions she and three of the seven children Fritzl fathered – Kerstin, now 20, Stefan, 18, and Felix, six – endured in the underground cellar.

She was left chained for days the cellar overrun with rats and raw sewage. The electricity often failed for up to 10 days at a time and the crude air ventilation system Fritzl rigged up would break down.

Elisabeth said: “I hated the summer and was always glad when it was over. It was like being in a sauna.” But she said the worst was not knowing if and when her father “would ever come back”.

Elisabeth said she eventually resigned herself to her grim fate and “stopped struggling“ against her evil father because she knew her life “depended on being co-operative”.

She also complied with his depraved demands to save daughter Kerstin from similar abuse.

Elisabeth, with lawyer Eva Plaz and judge Andrea Humer alongside her, gave the videotaped evidence from a clinic last July.

Yesterday Fritzl again tried to hide behind a file, as he had done on Monday as the hearing opened.

But his face was revealed to the world when he let his guard slip as he entered the court. Elisabeth’s older brother Harald, 46, also gave a

40-minute videotaped testimony to the court in St Poelten, outlining the depths of their father’s depravity.

Harald, the beast’s eldest son, confirmed Fritzl regularly abused his daughter and also beat him, once smashing his nose.

He told jurors his father touched Elisabeth in a way that was “not fitting between a father and daughter”.

Harald added: “As Elisabeth’s older brother she trusted me and told me what went on.”

But he claimed he was powerless to intervene for fear the brute would batter him again.

Meanwhile, it has emerged Fritzl was forced into bankruptcy as Austrian authorities try to claim back the medical costs of treating his cellar victims.

The file he tried to conceal his face behind details a bill for almost £100,000 for the care of Monika, now 14, who was born in the cellar but went upstairs to live with Fritzl.

It reads: “…Austrian social insurance laws we have the right from the person who inflicted the damage…to claim the following amounts.”

It goes on: “…the person that is entitled to the benefit, the family member Monika was allowed…the amount of the money totals the following.” There is also a list of the days she spent in hospital.

Twisted Fritzl tried to claim Elisabeth was mistaken about his abuse of her when she was a child.

He told the court she had been molested by a workman and a relative when she was growing up and had confused those attacks with the ones she suffered at his hands.

Fritzl is accused of six charges. He admits incest and false imprisonment and has pleaded “partially guilty” to rape and massive coercion.

The latter charge relates to his threat to gas or electrocute Elisabeth and her three kids if they tried to flee.

But he denies enslaving his daughter and murdering Michael.

If he is found guilty of murder of baby son Michael he is likely to spend the rest of his life in custody, possibly in a psychiatric unit.

But if cleared of murder he could be freed in less than eight years. The verdict is expected on Thursday.