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Australian woman has her ‘worst fears’ confirmed after finding out she was product of incest

Lois Buch has gone public after discovering her maternal grandfather was also her biological father

Harry Cockburn
Wednesday 18 May 2016 11:56 BST
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Australian woman has her ‘worst fears’ confirmed

A woman has revealed she had her “worst fears” confirmed after finding out she is the product of incestuous rape.

Lois Buch, 47, from Brisbane, Australia, who was adopted when she was a child, contacted her birth mother who refused to tell her who her father was.

Her mother subsequently died from cancer, leaving Ms Buch without answers, so she approached one of her mother’s sisters through Facebook who agreed to meet her. It was then that she found out she had been born to her mother and her maternal grandfather.

“She replied within 24 hours and said ‘I will tell you, I agree you deserve to know but you have to come to Sydney and see me face-to-face’,” Ms Buch told Australian current affairs programme SBS Insight.

Her aunt told her to “prepare for the worst”, and confirmed that her biological grandfather had repeatedly raped her mother and had also had a second child in the same circumstances.

Ms Buch said the news meant her “worst fears” had come true.

"Over the course of eight hours one Friday night, the truth and trauma of Ellen’s childhood was bared open to me," she told the news programme.

"Even now four years later, I freeze when I recall the stories that took me to a place I had no idea existed. That a father, or any man, could systematically rape his daughter over many years until she’s conditioned to it, just leaves me numb."

The abuse was kept secret within the family, and no charges were ever made against her biological father, according to Australia’s 9News.com, which also reports that around one-in-five Australian women have experienced family violence.

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