The Court went along with the demand of the Public Prosecutor and decided to stick to the 10-year prison term that the Court of First Instance in Groningen had already imposed in April last year. W. had filed an appeal in the hope of receiving a lower punishment.

 

Just like the Court of First Instance, the Appeals Court considered it proven that W. (53), who lives in Groningen, had sexually abused his daughter for some six years, from September 2004 to August 2010.

 

The daughter gave birth to a healthy baby girl on the toilet during a school trip in Groningen in March 2011, when she was 12. W. initially denied that he was the father of the child, but had to admit that he had made his daughter pregnant after a DNA test showed that he was the biological father.

 

The abuse reportedly started when the W. family lived in St. Maarten. Neighbours said he was a "nice man," except for when he was drunk, which was often the case. Family members suspected sexual abuse and at school people also had the sense that something was wrong. The concerns were relayed to the local Court of Guardianship and shortly after that, in 2008, the father returned to The Netherlands with his children.

 

Initially W. was suspected of having abused his daughter once, nine months before the delivery, but in a special hearing in February 2012, the daughter told investigators that her father had frequently raped her since she was five years old. She said she was under the impression that it was normal for fathers to have sex with their daughters.

 

W. had already been sentenced by a Court in 1995 for raping his eldest daughter. Unaware of his earlier conviction, Dutch authorities awarded W. guardianship over his two youngest children: the daughter that he made pregnant and her younger brother.

 

(The Daily Herald)