Another Woman Held Captive and Raped by Own Father

[Trigger Warning]

In a case reminiscent of the recent case of Austrian Josef Fritzl, a 73-year-old Argentine man held his daughter captive for 11 years, repeatedly raped her, and sired two children with her, using psychological terror and threats at gunpoint to keep her compliant.

Prosecuting Attorney Sergio Antin said the case of Eleuterio Soria had "similarities" to that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man arrested last month for locking his daughter in a basement for 24 years.

"If we're talking about sexual subjugation, and we take into account that the victim did not leave the house, yes, there are similarities" to the Fritzl case, government prosecutor Sergio Antin said after Soria was sentenced on Tuesday.

Soria's trial revealed that he began abusing his daughter in 1992, when she was 12 years old. The following year she became pregnant by her father, prompting her mother to leave their home in La Matanza, a working-class Buenos Aires district.

The family's five other siblings eventually left as well, abandoning the daughter to Soria.

The daughter, whose name was not released, had a second child by her father in 1997. Unlike Fritzl, Soria used psychological domination rather than physical restraints to keep her in the house. She did flee on various occasions, but would return home after he threatened their two children — often at gunpoint.

She finally escaped for good in 2003 and denounced her father to authorities. Argentine psychologists weren't surprised that it took her more than a decade to tell authorities.

"If the world inside was so perverted, how could she think that the world beyond would help her?" Cristina Castillo, a family psychologist in Buenos Aires, asked Wednesday.

And it's not just the world inside, which I suspect the poor girl realized quite pointedly on the occasions she ran away. Young women on their own with no foundation or means do not generally fare well, in Argentina or anywhere else—a reality driven home by Maria Elen Leuzzi, founder of Help for Rape Victims, who notes that the problem of intra-family rape is "much bigger than society is willing to admit" and says: "Here we have many Josef Fritzls."

Here, too.

Soria has been sentenced to 16 years in prison.

The AP coverage of this story refers to Soria's daughter as his "sexual prisoner." MSNBC's headline is "Argentine incest dad kept girl as sex prisoner." Alarmingly pithy.

[H/T to Shaker Bethany, via email.]