Mother, 3 children emerge from father's underground prison

AMSTETTEN, Austria (CNN) - Locked away for decades, a mother and her three children born out of an incestuous relationship emerged from their father's underground prison last week - one of them bound for a hospital where she is still fighting for her life.

The complex and unbelievable story of Elisabeth F. and her life of rape at the hands of her father has shocked this small town in Austria, and provoked a similar worldwide response - as evidenced by the torrent of media that has descended on Amstetten (prono: AHM-shtet-tuhn).

The main question: how could a man keep his daughter locked in his basement for 24 years, where she gave birth to seven of his children as her mother and three of those children lived upstairs without an inkling of the horrors in the cellar?

Josef F. - authorities have not released the family name - had explained Elisabeth's disappearance in 1984 by saying the 18-year-old girl had run away from home, a story backed up by letters he forced Elisabeth to write, including one that begged her parents not to look for her.