Some families keep secrets but possibly very few as horrifying as Austria’s Fritzls. The now-73-year-old father, Josef Fritzl, drugged his daughter, Elisabeth, in 1984 and locked her up in a secret cellar below his house for 24 years. There, he fathered seven of her children, of which one died, three lived with Elisabeth in their prison without sunlight, and three were raised by him and his wife, who, for all those years, thought her daughter ran away from home to join a cult.

Recent events in the past week brought the captives into the daylight and the into world’s collective guilt. You’ll think this is the stuff fiction is made of; well here’s your stranger truth. BBC.com has a timeline of the case; links to other reports and pictures are at their right sidebar.