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The Moe incest case emerged in February 2007 when a woman, identified only as "M" for legal reasons, reported to Victoria Police in the Australian town of Moe, Victoria, that her 63-year-old father, RSJ, had raped her, [1] [2] physically abused her and kept her prisoner in her own home between 1977 and 2005.
Police first learned about the alleged abuse in 2005, when M first came forward, but could not act because she did not want to co-operate after her father threatened violence against her mother and siblings.
The J family had been known to authorities for more than 30 years at the time the abuse came to light; three of RSJ's six children with his wife had died and others have spent time in state care. The allegations first emerged in a news report that said authorities had failed to investigate after being warned of the abuse years earlier. [3]
During the years of abuse, M gave birth to four of her father's children, each in a major hospital in the state capital Melbourne. One child, a girl, died from severe brain and respiratory developmental problems at eleven weeks of age; two of the surviving boys are seriously intellectually disabled; and the third boy has a major speech impediment and social interaction problems. None of the children had a father listed on their birth certificate, raising concerns about why questions were not asked at the time. The victim's mother was allegedly unaware of any abuse, despite sharing a house with her daughter, husband, and grandchildren until 2005.
RSJ was charged with 83 sexual abuse offences by police in June 2008 after DNA tests showed he was the father of M's surviving sons, LJ, CJ and NR. M and her sons were taken into the care of the Victorian authorities.
RSJ appeared in court in November 2009, where he pleaded guilty to ten counts of incest, two counts of indecent assault of a girl under the age of 16 and one count of common assault. He also asked for the remaining 70 counts against him to be taken into consideration.
During his sentencing in February 2010, [4] County Court Judge Susan Pullen said: "You defiled your daughter over many years on a regular basis. Your offending involved a gross breach of trust. To describe your treatment of your daughter as appalling is a gross understatement." [5]
RSJ was sentenced to 22 years and five months' imprisonment with a non-parole period of 18 years, and ordered to be placed on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life. With time in custody taken into account, he will be eligible for parole in February 2027 at the age of 83, and the sentence will expire in July 2031 when he is 88 years of age. [6]
His appeal against the sentence was dismissed on 29 June 2012. [7]
Incest is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity, and sometimes those related by affinity, adoption, or lineage. It is forbidden and considered immoral in most societies, and can lead to an increased risk of genetic disorders in children in case of pregnancy.
Matricide is the act of killing one's own mother.
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David John Birnie and Catherine Margaret Birnie were an Australian couple from Perth who murdered four women at their home in 1986, also attempting to murder a fifth. These crimes were referred to in the press as the Moorhouse murders, after the Birnies' address at 3 Moorhouse Street in Willagee, a suburb of Perth.
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Armando Lucero was an Argentine man arrested in 2009 on charges of raping one of his daughters over a period of 20 years. He was alleged to have fathered seven children with her, and also to have raped two of his other daughters. He was arrested when his daughter went to the police after fears he would abuse her own children.
Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus from the roads of Cleveland, Ohio and later held them captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city's Tremont neighborhood. All three young women were imprisoned at Castro's home until 2013, when Berry successfully escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while captive, and contacted the police. Police rescued Knight and DeJesus, and arrested Castro hours later.
Child sexual abuse is a matter of concern in Australia, and is the subject of investigation and prosecution under the law, and of academic study into the prevalence, causes and social implications.
The Colt family incest case concerns an Australian family discovered in 2012 to have been engaging in four generations of incest beginning with a couple known as Tim and June Colt, who emigrated from New Zealand in the 1970s. They all lived on a farm near Boorowa, New South Wales. The family members' true identities remain unknown to the public; the name "Colt" is a pseudonym used by New South Wales courts and government agencies, as are all of the family's given names.
Richard William Huckle was an English serial child sex offender. He was arrested by Britain's National Crime Agency in 2014 after a tip-off from the Australian Federal Police and convicted in 2016 of 71 charges of sexual offences against children, committed while he posed as a Christian teacher and a freelance photographer in Malaysia.
The Turpin case involved the abuse of children and dependent adults by their parents, David and Louise Turpin of Perris, California, U.S. The ages of the 13 victims ranged from 2 to 29 years-old. On January 14, 2018, one of the daughters, then-17-year-old Jordan Turpin, escaped and called local police, who then raided the residence and discovered disturbing evidence. Given the number of dependents involved, the degree of abuse, and the protracted nature occurring over decades, the story garnered significant national and international news. Experts in family abuse considered the case to be extraordinary for many reasons.
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