A sick pedophile who repeatedly raped his own daughter from the age of 3 before fleeing abroad for a decade has been jailed after she turned detective to track him down.
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.
For years, Heather Orr’s dad sexually abused her, telling her he was “teaching her” how to express love. For years, in both Delaware County and Arizona, her family tried to keep her quiet.
By the time Arizona authorities put her father, Frank K.C. Hertel on trial, Orr was 18 and struggling to deal with abuse that started when she was 3.
But before the trial began, Hertel vanished.
For the next nine years, he and his wife — Orr’s mother, Judy Hertel — lived a secret life in Germany, using his brother’s identity to take out loans from the German government to run a bar and grill. They kept their son — Heather’s brother — from talking to her.
And during that time, she lived in fear.
She married but had trouble trusting her husband. She went to therapy. She had children, but wouldn’t let her husband bathe their infant daughter or change her diapers.
Hertel, Orr said yesterday in Delaware County Common Pleas Court, “robbed me of feeling safe in this world.”
Then one day in 2009, she typed Hertel’s name into a Google search. An article about his father, who shares the same first and last name, came up. Her grandfather had been arrested at Heathrow Airport in London, charged with avoiding than $1.2 million in taxes owed the Canadian government.
A few people had commented at the bottom of the story about the Hertel family, and Orr thought they might know where her dad had been hiding. She sent a few emails, and replies flooded back.
Some of the commenters knew her dad. Orr found a link to the bar and grill, and contact information for its owners. Then, someone sent her a photograph of the restaurant. Her brother was standing out front. Orr was elated.
“It was exhilarating,” she said yesterday, after a court hearing that saw Hertel sentenced to serve between 19 and 95 years in prison for assaulting her in Ohio.
Orr, a survivor of incest and sexual abuse, struggles every day to be happy. Thankfully, Hertel will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars, where he can no longer hurt his daughter or other underage girls.
Source: AWM
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