Zimpapers Logo

BERLIN.
A German man accused of sexually abusing his stepson, daughter and stepdaughter and fathering eight children with the latter goes on trial next week, a court spokesman said yesterday.
The 48-year-old man, named in media reports as Detlef S, stands accused of 350 counts of sexual abuse and serious sexual assault of minors.
Between 1987 and 2010, the man is suspected of abusing the trio and farming the two females out to other men for sexual abuse in exchange for money.
One of the man’s neighbours told the Rhein Zeitung local daily: “We often wondered about the several children in his house, especially because they looked so much like him.”
According to the paper, he fathered eight children with the stepdaughter, one of whom died.
The paper reported that DNA tests had confirmed his paternity.
He was arrested on August 10 2010 and has been in custody since.
The trial is set to begin at the regional court in Koblenz, western Germany, on Tuesday.
The case bears some similarities to Austria’s notorious Josef Fritzl, who held his daughter Elisabeth as a sex slave in a cramped windowless dungeon for 24 years.
“The crimes are so horrific that even experienced lawyers are shocked,” the Rhein Zeitung said. — AFP.