Kerstin Fritzl, the young woman whose hospitalisation alerted Austria to its most shocking incest and abuse scandal, has woken up after seven weeks in an induced coma.

The 19-year-old is the daughter of Elisabeth Fritzl and her father Josef, who kept Elisabeth in a home-made dungeon for 24 years.

It was Mr Fritzl who took Kerstin to hospital on April 19, prompting an urgent appeal for her mother to come forward. Kerstin herself had never left the dungeon before and was suffering from multiple organ failure ascribed to a shortage of oxygen.

“The patient Kerstin F. was brought around from her artificial coma and was able to leave the intensive care unit a few days back,” the hospital in Amstetten said in a statement today. “The patient is still in need of intensive medical and therapeutic care.”

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Doctors put her into an artificial coma soon after she was taken to the hospital to help stabilise her position.

She is the oldest of the six surviving children from the incestuous relationship between Josef Fritzl and his daughter. Three of the children were raised in the dungeon while the three others were adopted by Mr Fritz and his wife, Rosemarie. Another child, a boy, died a few days after birth.

Prosecutors are investigating the 73-year-old for coercion, rape, incest and the death of the baby, though he has not been charged. Police say he has admitted incarceration and incest.

The hospital Doctors declined comment on a report on the Australian state broadcaster ORF that Kerstin had already been reunited with her mother, her grandmother and her siblings, who are all being cared for at the hospital.

Doctors treating Kerstin Fritzl, the offspring of Josef Fritzl and the daughter he imprisoned for 24 years, have started attempts to bring her out of an artificially induced coma.

The 19-year-old has been in hospital in Amstetten, Austria since April 19 when she was left there with a life-threatening condition – leading to the unravelling of Josef Fritzl’s shocking crimes against his family.

The 73-year-old has admitted imprisoning his daughter Elizabeth in a cellar below his house and fathering seven children with her. One of the children died shortly after birth.

The details of Kerstin’s illness have not been revealed but she reportedly suffered a multiple organ failure. She was put in a coma to stabilise her condition and allow her time to recover.

Doctors are now beginning to reduce the amount of medication being administered so she will come out of the coma gradually, the Austrian press reported today.

The clinic’s director, Dr Albert Reiter, said he could not tell how long it would take for her to become conscious again.

The five other surviving children are staying with their mother at the Amstetten-Mauer psychiatric clinic.

Before being freed, Stefan, 18, and Felix, five, had spent their entire lives in the basement with Kerstin and Elizabeth. Fritzl took Alexander, 12, Monika, 14 and Lisa, 15, into the family house to live with him and his wife Rosemarie while they were still babies.

He claimed they had been left on the doorstep by Elisabeth, who, he claimed, had left home to join a cult in 1984.

Fritzl appeared in court last month and was remanded in custody until June 9.
He has admitted burning the dead body of one of the children he fathered with Elisabeth, in 1996.

Prosecutors are deciding whether there is enough evidence to charge Fritzl with “murder through failure to act” or manslaughter for not calling medical help for the child.