The Austrian man who fathered seven children with his daughter while keeping her imprisoned in his dungeon claimed that media coverage was “unfair” and “entirely one-dimensional,” as he was “no monster,” Telegraph.co.uk reports.

“I am no monster,” Josef Fritzl said though his lawyer Rudolf Mayer, according to the German tabloid newspaper Bild. “I could have killed all of them, and no one would have known. No one would have ever found about it,” he added.

The incestuous relationship with his daughter Elisabeth, 42, allegedly produced seven children. Three of them, Kerstin, 19, Stefan 18, and Felix, five, had not seen sunlight until they were released by police officers last month after Kerstin was taken to hospital with an undiagnosed disease.

“Kerstin would not be alive today if it wasn’t for me. I have made sure that she gets to a hospital,” Fritzl said. Defense attorney Rudolf Mayer mentioned his client does not belong in a prison, but rather in a closed psychiatric hospital.

According to Reinhard Haller, one of Austria’s leading forensic psychiatrists, Fritzl’s main motivation was “the exercise of power. It is not a sign of mental illness, but rather of an extreme personality disorder.”

The horrific case reached the Austrian parliament, where MPS will debate on whether to introduce lengthier prison sentences for sex offenders and change laws in order to allow the criminal records to be preserved for a longer period.

Authorities said that 73-year-old Fritzl initially confessed to imprisoning and raping his daughter but has since remained silent. He has not yet been charged and remains in pre-trial detention, the Press Association reports.