Johannesburg police are investigating a case of incest after a Soweto man allegedly fathered children with his biological daughter.
In a case reminiscent of the sexual offences of Josef Fritzl – the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in a dungeon in his house and fathered seven children with her – the Soweto man has allegedly fathered three children with his middle daughter.
The daughter lives with him and her children – aged 15, two and five months – in his four-roomed house in Soweto.
Their names and the location of the house are being withheld to protect the children.
The man, who is in his early sixties, also allegedly attempted but failed to sexually violate his other two daughters.
The Gauteng Social Development Department has since taken the younger daughter to a place of safety because her father is said to be ill-treating her, accusing her of interfering in his relationship with his middle daughter.
Independent Newspapers spoke to three close relatives, who all confirmed that the man had sexually abused his middle daughter, aged 33, and that he had fathered children with her.
The relatives said the man’s wife died in November of suspected heart failure.
“I think my mother was too afraid to talk about the whole thing (the sexual abuse) because it caused her a lot of stress and depression.
Alone
“Whenever I asked her about it, she would just cry and tell me to leave her alone as I would cause her to die of a heart attack,” said the man’s eldest daughter.
The middle daughter initially denied having been sexually abused, but later, in a fit of anger, admitted it.
“It’s normal that when a father loves one of his children, people think I am in love with him (sic)… Who told you that?
“What’s the problem if he (her father) sleeps with me? It actually feels good, you know. Just like the way you feel when you sleep with your wife,” she said, before she hung up the telephone.
The sexual abuse is said to have started when the woman was in her early teens.
Her father had started grooming her by showering her with gifts and money.
The girl then boasted to her friends that her father loved her more than her siblings.
The man is said to have become obsessed with his daughter, preventing her from leaving the house and socialising with her friends.
He was also consumed by jealousy and possessiveness.
A relative said that once, when the girl ventured out of the house, her enraged father tortured her by clamping jump cables to her ears until she bled.
Relatives claimed they became suspicious of the relationship in 2000, when one of them caught the girl entering her father’s bedroom and locking herself inside when her mother was away.
“I asked her why she did that. She said it wasn’t my business,” said a relative, adding that she had reported the incident to the man’s wife.
The girl later admitted to entering the bedroom when quizzed by her mother, claiming she needed to give her father medication.
Obsession
“It shows there is something going on between them,” said a relative.
Relatives claimed that as the man’s obsession with his middle daughter grew, he banished his younger daughter from the house.
It is understood that the man had also kicked his wife out and stayed with his daughter and her children in the main house.
“Sometimes I try to forget about the whole thing and not involve myself.
“But I feel pain when I think about how my mother used to sleep in the toilet and how she died because of suffering,” one of the daughters said.
Relatives are now concerned about the welfare of the grandchildren, especially now that the 15-year-old boy has started confronting his mother about who his father is.
“When she (the middle daughter) was pregnant with the third child, my father told my mother that she must know that the pregnancy belonged to him (sic). It worsened her condition,” the eldest daughter said.
“When I asked my father about it, he chased me from his house.“
Police spokeswoman, Lieutenant-Colonel Katlego Mogale, said the SAPS viewed the allegations in a very serious light.
“An inquiry has been opened, and the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit has already obtained a statement from the victim and are investigating these allegations,” she said.