An Ohio man who repeatedly raped his daughter over a long period of time has finally been convicted after 10 years on the run.
Frank Hertel, 51, was sentenced by Delaware County Common Pleas Court, Ohio, on Tuesday to between 19 and 95 years behind bars after pleading guilty Monday to rape and gross sexual imposition.
Hertel’s daughter, Heather Orr, now 31 years old, was repeatedly raped by Hertel starting when she was just three years old. According to Orr’s claims, her father told her he was “teaching her how to express love.”
Following years of abuse, Hertel was eventually arrested and set to go to trial when Orr was 18 years old. However, days before the trial, Hertel, Orr’s mother Judy, and Orr’s brother fled to Germany. According to the New York Daily News, the couple used fake identities and ran a bar and grill for a decade.
For years, Orr, who was abandoned by her family, struggled to have a normal life. In 2009, after years of building up the courage to search for her father, Orr decided to run an Internet search for him. When she Googled her father’s name, she found an article about her grandfather being arrested and charged for $1.2 million in tax fraud. She contacted some of the people who commented on the article, and eventually, was able to learn about her family’s connections in Germany.
Using the new information, she pieced together where her father was hiding out. She contacted German authorities and passed along all of her newly acquired intel to them. They immediately began investigating Hertel’s whereabouts – and sure enough, he was captured soon after.
Orr contacted some of the article’s commenters, and they revealed where her father was hiding.
Rapist Frank Hertel cries in Ohio court. He was also convicted in Arizona for his pedophilia.
After passing the information onto police, Hertel was extradited back to the U.S. in 2012 and, facing the initial trial in Arizona, was sentenced to 20 years for child molestation.
He then appeared in Ohio on Monday to answer further charges. Convicted, he was sentenced the following day.
Claiming he was sorry for the abuse, he told Judge Everett Krueger: “It’s not the life that I wanted my daughter to have. I wanted her life to be perfect.”
Orr, who said she “fights every day to be happy,” revealed she was now writing a book about her ordeal.
“I have lost my entire family,” she told the Dispatch, adding: “I often wonder if I hadn’t found him, what would have happened.”
Sources: Taphaps, Dailymail, Tucson
C’mon man! What’s wrong with keeping it in the family? It’s a little like nepotism.