50-year-old on trial for incest

By Rachael Williams

A 50-year-old man is on trial in Klagenfurt on suspicion of incest.

The man from Spittal in Carinthia is believed to have repeatedly raped his 18-year-old daughter and also offered her to other men in exchange for money.

On Tuesday the man, not named for legal reasons, appeared before judge Sabine Roßmann and three magistrates at the District Court in Klagenfurt, but this was not his first court appearance. He had already been questioned by Roßmann in October 2012 after his daughter informed police that he had raped her under threat of physical violence. In addition to this, he had tried to offer his daughter to a friend for a fee of 200 Euro.

The father renounced his daughter’s statement before the court and he still denies the accusation. He admitted that he had shared a bed with his daughter, but only because their apartment was small with one sofa bed.

But this was rejected by several witnesses including the man’s ex-wife and also his sons. The family live in the same apartment building, though the father has his own apartment on the ground floor. The mother said that on many occasions her daughter had gone downstairs and been given alcohol from her father.