The Office of the Public Prosecutor on Monday ordered the internment of a 48-year-old man from Berchem on trial for raping his underage daughter.
The defendant is already serving a lengthy prison sentence for the rape of his two other children and a nephew.
The defendant, described by the appeal court as a "great danger to all children who come near him," was sentenced in October 2022 to 12 years in prison and 15 years' remand by a criminal court for raping his son, his elder daughter and a nephew.
A month earlier, the mother of his children had filed another complaint against him, as their youngest daughter had also told her that she was raped by her father.
The abuse had started when she was barely two years old. The child, who testified to seeing the accused rape her brother and elder sister, had also been thrown down the stairs by her father. An expert assessed her statement as truthful. However, the accused denied during the investigation that he had sexually abused his young daughter.
A psychiatric examination showed that the 40-year-old suffered from a mental disorder and was thus not culpable. The prosecutor therefore requested his internment.
The defence requested his acquittal, arguing that a criminal conviction would be inadmissible since he had already been barred from prosecution for the offences on his younger daughter. However, it stated that, should the court find him guilty, it would agree to internment.
According to the mother of the victims, the accused deliberately pretends to be mentally unstable in order to avoid punishment.
