Eritrean Refugee Allegedly Impregnated Own 12-Year-Old Daughter

A German court has heard a DNA test after a 12-year-old girl had an abortion, allegedly revealing her own father had impregnated her.

A 40-year-old man identified only as Eritrean migrant Tesfalem A. in line with local law allegedly abused his own 12-year-old daughter in July 2023, causing her to become pregnant, a court in Giessen, Germany has heard. Both father and daughter are reported by Germany’s Die Welt to have been living together ” in a collective accommodation for refugees” in Friedberg at the time of the crime.

This came to the attention of the police when the child was admitted to hospital for abdominal pains and found to be five months pregnant. The pregnancy was aborted “at the family’s request” — given the mother is said to have “little contact” with either, who would have made this request other than the father is not stated — but given the young age of the would-have-been mother, a DNA test was performed and police called.

DNA samples were taken from over 50 male residents of the migrant accommodation to find a culprit and the father is alleged to have initially refused to be tested. But once a match was found it became clear, the court heard, that the father Tesfalem A. was the father.

The daughter, who was 12-years old at the time of the alleged offence and who is now 13, said to be “severely traumatised”, suffering “dissociative behaviour”, and is “reserved”, and is understood to have never discussed what happened.

In his defence, the father — who has been in custody since February 2024 — said while he was “sorry from the bottom of my heard”, he nevertheless claimed to have absolutely no memory of the alleged rape. Instead, he says, he had spent the day drinking beer with a friend and was black-out drunk. The judge retorted, Hessenschau reports, that the defendant had never mentioned having been drunk at any point of the investigation up to that point, and that similar claims of alcohol-related memory loss had been made in other similar cases.

The girl has been taken into protective custody, has been receiving therapy, and is said to be making progress. The next hearing for the case is set for November.