Son Locked in Parents’ Cellar 33 Years

A mentally handicapped man kept locked in his parents’ cellar for 33 years has been discovered and freed, officials said.

Rudolf Sulzberger, 39, had been kept in a small smokehouse chamber furnished with a wooden bed, a chair and a bucket for a toilet, officials said.

No one in Berg Attergau, a village of 12 houses, could recall seeing him since he was 6.

Dr. Johann Haberl examined the man after the discovery and said he thought Sulzberger had been hidden from the community “because of false feelings of shame.”

“Now he must be evaluated as a mentally handicapped person, but that is at least in part because of the condition in which he lived for the past 33 years,” Haberl said.

Sulzberger’s mother, Aloisia, 70, told Austrian television that she saw nothing wrong with the room in which her son had been kept. Asked if she would like to live in such conditions, she told interviewers, “Why not?”

Sulzberger was taken from the village and hospitalized. Local officials discovered him after a government medical officer began investigating rumors that such a person existed.