A man who held his wife and seven children captive in a dilapidated house 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 unnamed suspect, aged 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 she could escape and report him to authorities. a month’s investigation before the property was raided.
Police found three fetuses buried in the garden, along with the man’s wife, also unnamed but said to be 40 years old, and said she had lived like this since she was 17 years old, a detail that evoked the horrors of the Josef Fritzl case raised in Austria.
He reportedly forced her to have three abortions. One of the fetuses that police found buried was about eight months old.
Police also said one of the daughters had a botched abortion of a six-month-old fetus. The baby reportedly survived and was rescued by a midwife.
The girl was reportedly in poor health, but her father refused her medical attention.
Authorities conducted a month-long investigation before raiding the property (pictured)
Police rescued seven children between the ages of three and 22
The unnamed suspect, aged 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 she could escape and report him to authorities.
Police rescued seven children ranging in age from three to 22. Investigators said the suspect sexually assaulted them and his deceased mother-in-law.
According to police, the suspect sexually assaulted his daughters and drilled holes in the walls of the house to watch the girls dress and bathe.
The suspect is being held in protective custody and the mother and children have been transferred to another state for their protection.
Police spokesperson Herika Ribeiro Sena said: ‘The victim only left home to receive benefits and was often accompanied by him. None of the neighbors 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 still ongoing.
It evokes the horror that Josef Fritzl inflicted on his daughter for 24 years, imprisoning and raping her again and again and forcing her to bear seven incestuous children.
Josef Fritzl is seen during day four of his trial at the St. Poelten court in 2009. He was given a life sentence
The 89-year-old was recently transferred from a high-security hospital wing for the criminally insane in Stein to a regular prison.
Fritzl was imprisoned in 2009 after admitting that he had raped his daughter Elisabeth (photo) and fathered seven children with her
Elisabeth was only 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 house in Amstetten, Austria.
Fritzl had his underground prison elaborately set up, with a heavy metal door hidden behind a shelf in his study.
He had ensured that only he could access it by installing a keyless, secret access code that only he knew – while his wife and six other children upstairs knew nothing of his double life.
He was able to drag his daughter to his lair after rendering his teenage daughter unconscious with a cloth soaked in ether. She was reportedly Fritzl’s favorite 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 the door was electrified so that if she tried to flee the shocking abuse, she would be killed.
During her 24-year captivity, Elisabeth became the mother of seven children, three of whom remained in captivity with her.