The dramatic discovery of three young women who were abducted around a decade ago in the US state of Ohio and were kept imprisoned in a house in Cleveland has several infamous precedents:
United States - August 26, 2009: Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped as an 11-year-old and repeatedly raped over 18 years by Phillip Garrido, who had been released from jail. He fathered her two children. She was kidnapped by Garrido and his wife Nancy while on her way to school in South Lake Tahoe, California, in June 1991. She was rescued in August 2009 after Garrido's parole officers became suspicious. The Garridos were jailed for life.
Austria - August 23, 2006: Natascha Kampusch was abducted by Wolfgang Priklopil at the age of 10 and kept prisoner in a cellar in a house in Strasshof, just outside Vienna, for eight years before she managed to escape in 2006. Priklopil committed suicide on the night that Kampusch escaped by throwing himself under a train.
Austria - April 2008: Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned and raped over a period of 24 years by her father Josef Fritzl, who kept her in the cellar of the family home at Amstetten, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Vienna. She bore him seven children. The case came to light when one of the children became ill and had to be hospitalised. Found guilty of murder for the death of one of Elisabeth's babies, as well as incest, sequestration, grievous assault and 3,000 instances of rape, the father was jailed in 2009 for life -- a sentence carrying a minimum 15 years in Austria.
{{/usCountry}}Austria - April 2008: Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned and raped over a period of 24 years by her father Josef Fritzl, who kept her in the cellar of the family home at Amstetten, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Vienna. She bore him seven children. The case came to light when one of the children became ill and had to be hospitalised. Found guilty of murder for the death of one of Elisabeth's babies, as well as incest, sequestration, grievous assault and 3,000 instances of rape, the father was jailed in 2009 for life -- a sentence carrying a minimum 15 years in Austria.
{{/usCountry}}Italy - June, 2008: Maria Monaco, 47, was set free after being locked in by her family for 18 years. Police found her living in "horrendous hygiene conditions" in a rural home outside Santa Maria Capua Vetere, north of Naples. She had been held since 1990 when her family learned she was pregnant and she refused to divulge the name of the father.
Japan - January 2000: An unidentified nine-year-old Japanese schoolgirl was snatched in November 1990 and spent nine years trapped on the second floor of her abductor's home in Kashiwazaki, about 250 kilometres north of Tokyo. She was freed aged 19 after health officials were called to the house by the man's mother. The kidnapper was in 2003 sentenced to 14 years in prison.