London - A man dubbed the "British Fritzl" began a life behind bars Wednesday, leaving a shocked nation to ponder how nearly three decades of violent abuse of his own daughters, resulting in 19 pregnancies and seven surviving children, could go undetected. The story of the 56-year-old, sentenced to 25 concurrent life terms by a court in Sheffield, northern England, Tuesday, provoked immediate comparisons with Austrian rapist Josef Fritzl, who is currently on trial for keeping his daughter Elizabeth in a dungeon for 24 years, fathering seven children.
Britain's Fritzl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, did not build a dungeon under his home, but instead moved frequently from village to village in the county of Lincolnshire to avoid detection.
He began his abuse in the early 1980s, raping his two daughters, who are now in their early 30s, up to 1,000 times, Sheffield Crown Court was told.
The "powerfully-built" father was described as a tyrannical bully who drank heavily and called himself the "main gaffer." He had threatened to kill his daughters if they disobeyed him.
"All the family were frightened of him. When they heard his car pulling up outside the house, the children and their mother ran into their respective rooms," said the prosecution lawyer.
The mother, who had also been violently attacked by her husband, had left the home, together with her teenage son, years ago.
"There was the look, a piercing look, an evil look," the younger daughter said in a statement read in court.
One of the women described how he would hold her head near to a gas flame, while the other reported being kicked and punched while pregnant to bring on a miscarriage.
The women frequently supplied their father with lots of whisky "in the hope that he would die," the court was told.
Their despair was such that they even paid their father 100 pounds (150 dollars) a month from their child benefit money to stop him raping them.
An attempt by one of the victims to report the abuse to ChildLine, a child protection group, some 10 years ago, led nowhere because the agency refused to give her the assurance that she would be able to keep her children, reports said Wednesday.
As long ago as 1988 one of the daughters appeared in school with burn marks on her face which teachers put down to bullying by other children.
Relatives claimed Wednesday that they had told the police repeatedly of the abuse, but no action was taken.
The court heard that doctors had raised concerns that the girls could have been raped, but failed to investigate further.
Neighbours, while curious about the growing family, and the lack of any other men apart from the man who called himself the children's grandfather, failed to raise the alarm.
Ten of the children conceived by the women were miscarried or terminated in hospitals.
Of the 9 who went full-term, two died on the day they were born. The remaining 7 have suffered health problems as a result of genetic abnormalities. Two are severely incapacitated and one has recently been diagnosed with a fatal condition.
"I can say that in nearly 40 years of dealing with criminal cases ... here is the worst I have come across," said presiding judge Alan Goldsack.
The offender, described in court as a self-employed businessman, was finally arrested in June this year. He initially denied any sexual relationship with his daughters, but changed his plea when DNA tests proved that he was the father. He stayed away from court when the verdict was pronounced.
A statement released by the two sisters, who are now facing the task of telling their children about the past, said: "Despite being born out of hate, we love our kids and always will."
