Man accused of abusing daughters for 40 years

AUSTRIAN police have arrested an elderly man who they suspect imprisoned, beat and sexually abused his two mentally disabled daughters over a 40-year period.

The 85-year-old from a village in northern Austria kept the women locked in a small kitchen with only a narrow wooden bench as a bed, police said.

“Both women have mental deficiencies and suffered permanent beatings and violence,” said Hermann Feldbacher, a spokesman for the Upper Austrian police department.

“They became dependent on their father and were so withdrawn and mentally disabled that they couldn’t cope on their own and were unable to leave the house unless he wanted this.”

The man faces charges of rape and other sexual offences, abusing or neglecting minors and defenseless people, threatening behaviour, coercion, and causing bodily harm, police chief Alois Lissl told news agency APA.

Authorities said the man had denied all charges.

Police said the man, identified as Gottfried W, repeatedly threatened to kill his daughters, now aged 53 and 45, and subdued them with weapons. He wielded a gun and beat them with a cane and a pitchfork.

Police said he abused his daughters from 1970 to May 2011 in the village of St Peter am Hart near the German border.

He also abused his wife in a similar way, they said. She died in 2008.

“It seems possible that after 40 years of abuse that they suffered psychological effects but it could also be that someone who is already mentally disabled is the ideal victim for abuse,” said Feldbacher.

The man banned his daughters from having “any social contact”, police said. The women are now being housed in a care shelter and receiving psychiatric treatment.

The details only became public now because of an investigation by a regional newspaper.

The sisters were discovered in May when the father tried to rape the elder daughter and she fought back, causing him to fall to the ground, police said. The daughters did not call any medical help for two days, after which a visiting social worker found him and alerted the authorities.

He is now bedridden in hospital but “mentally active” for his age, police said. APA said he would be transferred to a temporary prison and legal proceedings have begun.

The descriptions had echoes of the Josef Fritzl incest case in 2008 that rocked Austria and drew international outrage.

Fritzl fathered seven children with his incarcerated daughter before being imprisoned for life in 2009, aged 74.

It was also reminiscent of the kidnapping of Austrian schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch, who escaped from her captor in 2006 after being held for eight years in a basement.