A POLISH man who imprisoned his daughter for six years, raping her repeatedly and fathering her two sons, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
A court in the eastern Polish city of Bialystok found Krzysztof Bartoszuk (47) guilty of rape, sex with a minor, and physical and psychological abuse.
Bartoszuk was arrested in September 2008 near the border with Belarus after police received complaints from his wife, Teressa, and his daughter, Alicja.
Alicja, now 22, said she was 14 when her father first raped her, calling her “my little prostitute”.
He kept her locked in a room with no door handle, visiting her only to rape her, and allowing her out of the room only to give birth to two boys, in 2005 and 2007.
“He kept telling me I was a prostitute, and that was why I deserved what he was doing to me. And that was how I felt,” she told a Polish newspaper yesterday.
Polish media have dubbed Bartoszuk the “Polish Fritzl”, a nod to Austrian Josef Fritzl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years and fathering her six children.
Alicja Bartoszuk gave birth twice in the six years, but her father put pressure on her to give the two boys up for adoption.
The Bartoszuk family lived in a run-down house in rural north-east Poland and avoided contact with locals.
Teressa Bartoszuk said she was aware of the abuse but felt helpless to intervene.
“I am so sorry that I was not able to protect my daughter,” she told Polish media.
“Even before the first rape I noticed how he touched her where a father shouldn’t. But he said, ‘I have a right to her’, as if she was an object for him.”
Bartoszuk controlled his family by fear, telling his wife and daughter he would kill either of them if they told of what went on in their house.
The polish state prosecutor had sought a 15-year sentence, arguing that Bartoszuk displayed extreme cruelty and unusual violence to his daughter. But the court was of the view that these offences were limited to threats.
“He would threaten to kill his daughter, or say she provoked him into [having] sex,” said a court spokesperson. “But he didn’t use violence as such. She was intimated by his threats and in the end did not protest, though she never gave her consent.”
Bartoszuk plans to appeal the verdict.
