A father from the village of Meerkerk, south of Utrecht, has been jailed for eight years for systematically raping his three of his daughters over a period of several years.

He has also been banned from contacting them for five years and ordered to pay them damages.

Johan J, 51, who had eight children, first denied but later admitted the abuse. He began raping one daughter several times a week in 2008 but only stopped when she fled to her grandparents. She made a formal police complaint but her father was not prosecuted at the time, and he accused his daughter of being a liar.

J then began abusing two other girls and the abuse went on until last year, when they too made a formal complaint. Two of the girls were under the age of 10 when the abuse started.

The public prosecution department had called for a six year sentence, but the court went for a longer jail term because the father had committed ‘one of the most serious forms of sexual abuse’ the ruling stated.

The three women are still struggling with the fact that it was their father who sexually abused them for years, and dealing with the psychological consequences of the abuse, the court said.