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'Italy's Josef Fritzl' arrested for incest, sex abuse

Italian police have arrested a 64-year-old man for sexually abusing his daughter during 25 years and encouraging his son to do the same, in a case dubbed "Italy's Josef Fritzl" by the media.
/ Source: Reuters

Italian police have arrested a 64-year-old man for sexually abusing his daughter during 25 years and encouraging his son to do the same, in a case dubbed "Italy's Josef Fritzl" by the media.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Turin have charged the man's 41-year-old son with sexual abuse of his sister and his own four daughters, aged between six and 20.

"It seems that in this family there was a sort of right of 'droit de seigneur' of the father over the daughter," prosecutor Pietro Forno was quoted as saying by Italian news agency Ansa.

The man's daughter, now 34, was forced to leave school in her early teens and complained to authorities of sexual abuse as early as 1994, but was not taken seriously.

The father and son, both street traders, have been charged with rape, family abuse, and obscene acts in public because some of the sexual abuse took place in a car.

Fritzl, a 73-year-old Austrian, was sentenced to life in a secure mental unit this month for locking up and raping his daughter in a cellar over 24 years, fathering seven children with her and causing the death of his own infant son.

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