Briton jailed for raping his daughters, fathering their children

This story is about as awful as I have ever seen; all child abuse is dreadful but where it is sexual abuse by a parent the horro is multiplied. A curious point is that the abuse seems to have started before the parents split up but the children stayed with the father; quaere what did the mother know.



What is surprising, at least to me, is how common abuse of daughters by fathers and step fathers is. Granted, because of my job as a lawyer I see the depraved side of life more than others, but my sense is (and this is an educated guess) perhaps one in 50 women are sexually abused by a parental figure. This abuse is only rarely conducted over an extended period, and often takes place no more than once or twice, but it is enough to cause lifelong harm.



Sadly, the reality of such abuse is sometimes misused to make false claims of abuse for collateral purposes usually in family law cases. And here, the mere allegation is often enough (even where false) to harm the daughter alleged to have been abused.



Of course, sexual abuse is not limited to daughters but I have not run across parental abuse of sons very often -- abuse of young boys does occur but from what I have seen usually by other family members (uncles or cousins) or people with access to the boy but from outside the family.



Briton jailed for raping his daughters, fathering their children


LONDON (AFP) - A British man who fathered seven children by raping his two daughters was jailed for life on Tuesday in a case described by the judge as the worst he had ever seen.



The 56-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made his daughters pregnant 19 times over a 25-year period of abuse.


He was jailed for life at Sheffield Crown Court in northern England and must serve a minimum of 19 and a half years.


In court last month, the Sheffield man admitted 25 rapes and four indecent assaults.


He made his elder daughter pregnant seven times, fathering two surviving children by her. Two other babies died the day they were born. He made his younger daughter pregnant 12 times.



She has five surviving children.


...





The sexual abuse started in 1981, when the girls were between eight and 10 years old, but they only realised the other was also being abused when they fell pregnant some years later, the court heard.


The man's wife left her husband during the early 1990s, but the girls and their brother continued to live with him.


...


Judge Alan Goldsack said: "I can say that in nearly 40 years of dealing with criminal cases and 14 as a family judge, the combination of aggravating circumstances here is the worst I have come across.


"I have little doubt that many members of the public hearing the facts of this case will consider either you should never be released from prison or only when you are old and infirm. I agree with that view."