Charges: Minneapolis father beat, raped twin daughters

A 51-year-old Minneapolis man is accused of beating his mentally disabled twin daughters, raping them and chaining them to a bedroom door in a case described as torture.

The man was charged this week with several felonies, including first-degree criminal sexual conduct, first- and second-assault and abuse of a vulnerable adult by a caregiver. He is jailed on $750,000 bail, with his first court appearance scheduled Thursday.

The Star Tribune reported that charges and a protective order against the suspect reveal he fathered two children by one of the twins.

The Associated Press is not naming the father to avoid identifying the women, who are now in their early 20s.

Authorities said the man was upset that one of the twins had become sexually active and felt they were eating too much.

One of the twins escaped to alert authorities last May. County human services official a short time later removed the other twin and a younger sister from the family’s home.

Child safety experts who examined the twins soon after they were removed their parents’ care concluded that their injuries were “clinically diagnostic of torture.”

In a petition for a protection order that a Hennepin County judge granted in June, the twin who was impregnated twice said she did not “ever remember having enough food.”

“He forced me to have sex, (and) he has done this to me every day since I was (in my) early teens or so,” the twin’s account continued. “He did this to my twin sister also.”

According to the complaint, the other twin, identified as Victim A, said that once her parents realized she was “sexually active,” her father repeatedly put a dog chain tightly around one or both ankles and connected it to the parents’ bedroom door “to prevent her from seeing men” and to deny her food. The twin said her father would beat her while she was bound, and that her twin, referred to as Victim B, also was chained.

An exam of Victim A found a “largely detached” left ear, and scars on her forehead, scalp and back. She also had a chronic limp from being chained around her ankle so tightly and could not see out of her left eye after her father allegedly stomped on her head.

In June, a nurse saw Victim B crying, and she said her father had raped her and that she was pregnant by him. She said he “routinely raped her” when her mother was not home, the complaint said.

Online court records do not list a defense attorney who could comment on the father’s behalf.