A man who kept his wife and seven children prisoners in a run-down home for 20 years and raped them before forcing them to have abortions has been arrested after one of his daughters escaped and reported him.
The as-yet-unnamed suspect, 54, who lived in Novo Oriente, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, was arrested after one of his daughters gave him sleeping pills so that she could escape to report him to the authorities, who carried out a month-long investigation before raiding the property.
Police found three foetuses buried in the garden, with the man’s wife, not named either but said to be 40 years old, saying that she had lived like that since she was 17 years old, a detail that evoked the horrors of the Josef Fritzl case in Austria.
He reportedly forced her to have three abortions. One of the foetuses that the police found buried was about eight months old.
The police also said that one of the daughters suffered an unsuccessful abortion of a six-month-old foetus. The baby reportedly survived and was rescued by a midwife.
The girl was reportedly in poor health but her father refused her any medical help.
Authorities carried out a month-long investigation before raiding the property (pictured)
Police rescued seven children aged three to 22
The as-yet-unnamed suspect, 54, who lived in Novo Oriente, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, was arrested after one of his daughters gave him sleeping pills so that she could escape to report him to the authorities
Police rescued seven children aged three to 22, with investigators saying that the suspect had sexually abused them and his late mother-in-law.
According to police, the suspect sexually abused his daughters and drilled holes in the walls of the house to see the girls getting dressed and taking a bath.
The suspect is being held in preventive custody and the mother and children have been moved to a different state for their protection.
Police spokesperson Herika Ribeiro Sena said: ‘The victim only left home to receive benefits and, many times, was accompanied by him. None of the neighbours knew her, not even relatives had access to her.’
The man was charged with false imprisonment, rape of a vulnerable person, psychological violence, abortion and concealment of a corpse.
The investigation into the shocking case is ongoing.
It evokes the horror that Josef Fritzl inflicted on his daughter for 24 years, imprisoning and raping her over and over again and forcing her to give birth to seven incestuous children.
Josef Fritzl is seen during day four of his trial at the country court of St. Poelten in 2009. He was handed a life sentence
The 89-year-old was recently moved from a maximum security hospital wing for the criminally insane in Stein to a regular prison
Fritzl was locked up in 2009 after he admitted to raping his daughter Elisabeth (pictured) and fathering seven children with her
Elisabeth was just 18-years-old when she disappeared in 1984, and she would not reappear until April 2008, when she was discovered in a clandestine cellar beneath her father’s home in Amstetten, Austria.
Fritzl had intricately set up his underground prison, which featured a heavy metal door hidden behind a shelf in his workroom.
He had made sure only he could gain access to it, installing a keyless, secret code entry only known to him – while his wife and six other children, upstairs, knew nothing whatsoever about his double life.
He was able to drag his daughter down into his lair after he rendered his teen daughter unconscious with a rag soaked in ether. She was allegedly Fritzl’s favourite child – and he specifically groomed her to become his sexual partner, after first abusing her when she was just 11.
Elisabeth was manipulated by her father into thinking that the door was electrified, so that she would be killed if she tried to flee from the shocking abuse.
Over the course of her 24-year-imprisonment, Elisabeth became a mother to seven -three of which remained in captivity with her.
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