‘Australian Fritzl’ ‘raped and imprisoned’ daughter

A man already dubbed 'Australia's Fritzl' has been charged with rape and incest after he allegedly raped his daughter almost daily for three decades and fathered her four children.

The man, who has not been named but is thought to be in his 60s, is also accused of keeping his daughter a virtual prisoner in her own home. He is said to have sexually abused her since the 1970s, when she was just 11 years old.

According to a report in Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper, the man was arrested in February after the victim, who is now in her forties, reported the rapes to police four years ago. However she then refused to co-operate further because she feared for her safety. Last year, however, she went to the police again and gave a statement against her father.

Police charged some 80 sex offences against the man in February, after DNA tests allegedly proved he is the father of his daughter's four children. The trial starts in November.

All four children had been born in Melbourne hospitals with serious health problems, and one, a girl, died soon after birth. None of the children had a father listed on their birth certificates, raising concerns about why questions were not asked at the time.

The victim's mother claims to have been unaware of any abuse, despite sharing a house in rural Victoria with her daughter, husband and grandchildren until 2005. In an interview she said that when she asked her daughter who had fathered the children, she would "clam up".

Although her husband was moody and could be verbally abusive, she had never suspected him of sexual abuse, she added. "We lived in a big house, so I wouldn't have known. He had a very sharp tongue. He was a drinker."

The case is the latest in a series of rape and imprisonment stories that have come to light in recent years:

• Austrian Natascha Kampusch was kidnapped at the age of 10 by paedophile Wolfgang Priklopil and held captive for eight years. Priklopil committed suicide when Kampusch escaped.

• Josef Fritzl, another Austrian, kept his then 18-year-old daughter in a dungeon in the basement of his home for 25 years. He raped her repeatedly and fathered seven children by her before being discovered in 2008.

• A 'South African Fritzl' allegedly kidnapped and raped his long-lost German daughter when she flew to Cape Town to visit him.

• Last month Jaycee Lee Dugard was freed after spending almost two decades locked in the backyard of her kidnapper Phillip Garrido. The Californian allegedly fathered two children by Dugard, who he kidnapped as an 11-year-old and held for 18 years. ·