In the town of Moe, there is a red brick housing commission house. It has four bedrooms, including two rooms at the back where children would normally sleep.
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Sorry, this video is no longer available.Today, Molly, who now lives there with her family, woke to the news the house was once home to a man alleged to have fathered four children to his own daughter, raping her almost daily from the age of 11.
Police arrested the man in February, just as bushfires were bursting into flame across Victoria. He will face court in November.
“It is disgusting to me,” Molly says as she stands outside her house with neighbours. “The idea that there was someone trapping his daughter there and having kids with her. I hope they lock him up for life for what they did.”
Jeanette lived alongside the family for several years. She says she had no inkling of what was going on inside the latest house of horror involving a father and daughter.
“They were alright when they first came here,” she said. “I knew there were a few children in there but I wouldn’t have thought that was happening. You would hardly see the kids because they were always inside. They never used to hardly go outside. I think I only seen them once in a blue moon playing out the back.”
Victorian Community Services Minister Lisa Neville said this morning that she was “extremely appalled" by the allegations and would make a priority of looking into the case.
“They are only allegations and are before the courts at the moment and we need to be very careful about how much detail we go into,” Ms Neville told ABC radio.
People close to the case compared it to that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter and fathered seven children with her.
It could be “every bit as bad”, a source told the Herald Sun. The woman and her three surviving children are in a safe house, being cared for by authorities.
“I became aware of this from the media today and I don’t know what, or if, (there has been) any involvement of the police, the department or other agencies … over the past 30 years.
“This will be a priority to look into.”
The alleged rapes are said to have started in the 1970s when the victim was about 11 and continued until 2007.
All four children were born with health problems in major Melbourne hospitals. None have fathers listed on their birth certificates, raising concerns about why questions were not asked at the time.
One of the children died from severe developmental problems soon after birth.