'Mummy Called Me Satan'

Flings

He said: "I had various short flings with women in Ghana, nothing serious.

"I paid either money or gave presents, but I was really cautious because I was worried about sexually transmitted diseases.

"I always chose nice girls - no prostitutes - for that reason."

He also rejected claims that he had physically abused any members of his family either with beatings or other acts of violence.

He said: "They are all saying that now because they have been manipulated. "The fact is I was a very loving father and husband."

He added that the proof in his eyes that he had made the right decision to raise his cellar family had been the fact that Elisabeth's children were far more loving to him than the children he had with Rosemarie – namely Elisabeth's brothers and sisters.

To prove he was a loving father he told a psychiatrist that he had even taken Easter eggs into the cellar and hidden them around the dungeon for the children to find in a twisted version of the traditional Easter egg hunt.

And he had also taken Elisabeth's three children that were allowed to live in freedom back to see her for visits so that she could see they were getting on well and being looked after.

He said: "I only did that all the time they could not speak, as soon as they started to be able to speak the visits had to stop."

And as well as buying the aquarium for them he claimed he had also bought them a budgie at some stage, but that the bird had sickened and died quickly in the cellar where the family had to constantly battle against stale air and mould on the walls. Fritzl had seven children with his wife Rosemarie and seven children with Elizabeth during the 24 years she was imprisoned under ground – one of whom died and was burned by Fritzl in an incinerator.