London, February 12: A 65-YEAR-old father who was reunited with his long-lost daughter via a Spanish reality TV show went on to rape her.
The Times of London reported today that when he contacted the popular show, the man, who was not named to protect his victim’s identity, seemed like a normal father who was desperate to get back in touch with the two daughters he had not seen for nearly 40 years.
By chance, one of his daughters saw him on the program and the two were reunited after 38 years apart.
But this was not to have the happy ending that normally delights the producers and audiences of Spain’s reality shows.
The father repeatedly sexually abused the younger daughter, who was scarred by the experience of growing up without a father.
A court in Malaga jailed the father for seven years Thursday.
The daughter’s ordeal began in 2003 when she was watching an edition of El Diario de Patricia (Patricia’s Diary), a Spanish reality show that specialises in family scandals, marriage breakdowns or long lost relatives appearing by surprise live on air.
The woman spotted her father, who told viewers that he had not seen his two daughters since 1966 when he split up with their mother.
She decided to get in touch with him after they spoke on the telephone. They met for the first time in Torremolinos, near Malaga.
The mood changed when the father kissed her on the lips during one of their seafront meetings.
Instead of refusing to see him again, she returned with him to her home in Malaga, where he sexually abused her.
The court was told that the abuse continued during several other meetings and he later raped his daughter.
A psychiatric report, submitted to the court, said that the woman did not react in the normal way when her father started to abuse her “because of the lack of support which she had suffered throughout her life.”
It was the latest in a series of real-life tragedies to have hit the hugely popular TV shows, which Spaniards call telebasura (rubbish television).
Two years ago Antena 3, the maker of El Diario de Patricia, faced calls to close the show after Svetlana Orlova, a single mother, declined her ex-boyfriend Ricardo Navarro’s live proposal of marriage. A week later she was murdered by him.
—Agencies