'Argentina's Fritzl' arrested after using daughter as a sex slave for 22 years

Domingo Bullicio aka Vernacho has been arrested after the discovery that he had kept his daughter hostage for 22 years. Photo: El Liberal / Twitter

A man accused of raping his daughter for 22 years and fathering eight children with her has been arrested in Argentina.

In a case that has been compared to the abuse Elizabeth Fritzl suffered at the hands of dad Josef in Austria, Domingo Bullicio - known to friends as Vernacho - was detained in the northern city of Loret after a month-long manhunt.

The 56-year-old is accused of turning his daughter Antonia into a sex slave when she was just nine-years-old after his wife left him with their three other children.

He fled the rundown property in Villa Balnearia in Santiago del Estero after the victim, now aged 31, managed to escape and ask authorities for help.

Pictures on Argentinian media show him with his head covered in handcuffs in the back of a police truck after his detention.

"Vernacho": el monstruo de Villa Balnearia que violó a su hija durante 22 años https://t.co/tYP6eCkB3L pic.twitter.com/YUcq7RtEaT

— El Liberal (@elliberalweb) January 7, 2016

Antonia told a local paper she had been abused from an early age by her dad - many times in front of her children - and had received death threats since going public with her ordeal.

She said that her uncle also sexually abused her.

"From the moment my mum left home I became my father's wife," she recalled.

"He abused me from the age of nine.

"He would hit me and used to chase me round the house with a lump of wood when he saw me chatting to a neighbour or simply wanted to abuse me.

"He threatened me constantly and I always feared for my life. He told me he would kill me if I said anything.

"I'm scared for my life and the life of my children because today I'm receiving threats from my father's siblings to withdraw my complaint against him.

"They're not at all concerned about what's happened.

"I want him to rot in jail. I want justice to be done."

DNA tests on Bullicio, who was on court on Monday, will determine whether the children are his. He is said to have registered the youngsters as his own.

Prosecutor Marcelo Sgoifo said Bullicio faced multiple rape charges.

Elizabeth Fritzl was was imprisoned from the age of 18 in a cramped and windowless 18 square metres cellar in the town of Amstetten, Austria, by her father Josef who repeatedly raped her.

She gave birth to seven children while held captive in the cellar - with three of them ending up trapped inside with her.

The abuse by her dad, now serving life imprisonment, resulted in the birth of seven children and one miscarriage.

- Daily Mail