A Port Augusta man, 56, who sexually abused his stepdaughter and niece has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
The girls were aged three to 13 when they were raped and forced to give oral sex to the man they looked up to as a father.
A Port Augusta man, 56, who sexually abused his stepdaughter and niece has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
The girls were aged three to 13 when they were raped and forced to give oral sex to the man they looked up to as a father.
His victims, now young women, say the abuse has turned their lives into a living nightmare.
Though the crimes occurred between 1978 and 1983, it was DNA evidence that eventually helped prove the case against the local man.
More than two decades after his crimes were committed, police said they found semen stains and a pair of girl’s underpants in a ceiling space above a bathroom in a Port Augusta home.
His victims said he used to watch them bathing by looking through a manhole in the ceiling.
When handing down his sentence on Thursday, District Court Judge Geoffrey Muecke described the abuse “as the worst category of such offending”.
“Your two victims were very young and you used fear to effect their silence.
“Both of these children deserved and should have expected your love and your support, not your abuse and treachery,” he said.
One of his victims, his stepdaughter, told the court she had been threatened and emotionally damaged by her stepfather.
She said when she was about 10 he gave her the nickname of “Freak” and said if she told anyone about the abuse he would kill her mother.
The man and his wife were foster carers to other victim, his niece, who first came to live with them when she was six-years-old.
The abuse started soon after.
She was often cornered by her uncle in the bathroom, including on one of her birthdays when he told her she had to give him oral sex if she wanted a present.
At one point she stopped showering in an attempt to escape the continual assaults.
In a statement read out to the court the woman said she now had no self-worth, no confidence, makes no plans for the future and did not enjoy life.
She described herself as an “empty shell” and felt her abuser “had won” because she will remember what he did to her each day for the rest of her life.
The victims told police that the man’s wife, their mother or aunt, knew about some of the abuse but did nothing to stop it.
When they eventually got up the courage to make an official complaint they were threatened by family members, who told them to drop the charges.
One of the victims said she was no longer allowed to see her nieces and nephews, who “see misses and loves”.
“It is so desperately sad to hear such a young woman refer to ‘a terrible secret which held her family together and eventually tore it apart’,” said Justice Muecke.
The man had attempted to commit suicide when he was first arrested in May this year.
He pleaded guilty to three counts of incident assault and eight counts of unlawful sexual intercourse, which occurred at four homes in Port Augusta.
The sentence is one of the longest for child sex crimes in South Australia.
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