Father "chained twin daughters up for 10 years and raped them repeatedly"

A father has been charged with repeatedly raping his twin daughters and starving them in an ordeal that lasted for at least 10 years.

Jerry Lee Curry, 51, is accused of chaining his daughters up for 10 years, starving and beating them at their home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US. The father tortured the girls for years, tied them down with chains and gave them very little to eat. As a result of the long stretches of captivity, one of the daughters suffered gangrene and needed surgery to save her feet.

One of the victims suffered a "largely detached" left ear and she was found to have scars on her forehead, scalp and back. She said that her father had beat her with a bat and a paddle. Their 10-year-old sister said that she was forced to beat her twin sisters with a stick, but she was not found with signs of physical abuse.

The abuse of the twin sisters continued unnoticed for years until one of the twins escaped and managed to alert authorities. According to the Star Tribune, one of the girls said that the abuse started when her parents found out that she was sexually active. He put a dog chain around her ankles and tied it to his bedroom door. The second twin fell pregnant twice as a result of being raped by her father and told her rescuers that she doesn’t "ever remember having enough food".

She added: "He forced me to have sex, [and] he has done this to me every day since I was [in my] early teens or so. He did this to my twin sister also. It feels so good today to not be chained to the bed."

The daughters are now in their 20s and suffer from diminished mental and behavioral capacity.