A statement from the daughters read by police
- 00:00:44
- ITN
A statement from the daughters read by police
A father who got his two daughters pregnant 19 times in a 25-year campaign of sexual abuse has been jailed for life. The 56-year-old man "took pleasure" in knowing the harm he was doing to his two daughters and threatened them with a "real hiding" if they refused to have sex with him, Sheffield Crown Court heard. The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Alan Goldsack, ordered the rapist to serve a minimum of 19 and a half years before being considered for parole. The defendant made his elder daughter pregnant seven times, fathering two children by her. She bore two other babies but they died the day they were born. He made his younger daughter pregnant 12 times and she has five surviving children. The man also had a son, who lived with them until his teenage years. Prosecutor Nicholas Campbell QC said: "All the defendant's children spoke of his domination over their family life." He added: "All the family were frightened of him. When they heard his car pulling up outside the house, the children and their mother ran to their respective rooms. "His son described him as having a Jekyll and Hyde personality and that his dad had a one-second fuse and that he could flip and turn just with the click of his fingers." Mr Campbell said the daughters were raped every three days at times, adding: "One sister would babysit the other children while the other was being raped. "One of them did try to offer him £100 a month to stop and paid it from her child benefit. That went on for two to three months." The daughters gave their father as much whisky as he wanted in the hope he would drink himself to death. But it was not until last summer that the younger daughter managed to flee her father's grasp. The defendant, from Sheffield, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted 25 rapes and four indecent assaults last month. He has been compared with the Austrian rapist Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter locked in a dungeon for 24 years as he fathered seven children with her.
ITN | November 25, 2008
