Police in the eastern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca arrested a 66-year-old farmer found to have conceived seven of his seventeen children with his own daughter, reported El Tiempo on Friday.
Neighbors of the family, who live in a farming community in the municipality of Bugalagrande, alerted Valle authorities in July 2009 as to the incest that was occurring within the household.
Since then, police have been able to confirm, through DNA testing, that seven of the arrested man’s biological children, whose ages range from thirteen months to seventeen years, were the product of almost twenty years of supposed sexual abuse of one of his daughters, thought to have started when she was an teenager.
The man was arrested by police on Tuesday and will be investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office of Tulua for crimes of incest and rape.
Authorities will also be investigating potential sexual abuse of the man’s other children, in particular one daughter/granddaughter who is currently pregnant.
The arrested man will be held in the Tulua prison to await trial.
