A man who has been dubbed Australia’s Josef Fritzl is alleged to have kept his daughter a virtual prisoner in their home, raping her daily and fathering her four children.

The man, whose identity is being withheld, has been charged with incest, rape and assault of a child. The abuse allegedly began in the 1970s when she was 11 and he threatened her with violence to keep her quiet. It continued even as the family moved houses.

The girl was discouraged from making friends outside the home she shared with her alleged attacker, her mother and her children. The three boys and a girl all suffered birth defects, the girl dying at 12 weeks.

According to the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper, the alleged victim reported the abuse to police in 2005 but refused to co-operate further because she feared for her safety.

She obtained a restraining order against her father in 2007 and went to police again in June last year to make a statement. Officers conducted DNA tests and brought charges in February.The man, in his sixties, faces five charges of incest, five of rape and two of indecently assaulting a girl under 16. He will appear in court in November.

The woman, now in her forties, and her three sons are being cared for by authorities in the state of Victoria.The Herald Sun interviewed the woman’s mother, who said that she was unaware of any abuse. She asked her daughter who had fathered the children but was given vague answers. “She used to say something about going out to nightclubs and meeting a fella, but then she would clam up.”

She described her husband as moody, but never suspected him of sexual abuse. “We lived in a big house, so I wouldn’t have known. He had a sharp tongue. He was a drinker.”

The town of Moe, in Victoria’s La Trobe valley, is coming to terms with the news that such abuse may have occurred in its midst. Eighty miles east of Melbourne, it gained notoriety in 1997 after the disappearance and murder of a toddler, Jaidyn Leskie.

In May, Josef Fritzl was jailed in Austria for life for imprisoning and raping his daughter over 24 years and murdering one of the seven children he fathered with her. John Brumby, the Victoria Premier, demanded an investigation into how the abuse had gone unnoticed for so long.

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