Father imprisoned his daughter for ten years

A 21-YEAR-OLD Palestinian woman has told authorities she was locked in a bathroom for the past decade by her father, who let her out only in the dead of night so she could clean their house.

Baraa Melhem said her father would tell her, “People are monsters,” according to a social worker dealing with the case.

Palestinian police said yesterday they freed Ms Melhem from the small bathroom of a home in the West Bank city of Qalqilya on Saturday after an anonymous tip.

Her father, who holds Israeli citizenship, was arrested and handed over to Israeli authorities. He is due to appear in an Israeli court on Wednesday, an Israeli police spokesman said.

Ms Melhem told Voice of Palestine radio that when she was 11, her father confined her to the toilet and did not allow her to go to school or see her mother, whom he had divorced. She was beaten with a baton and metal wires and given only one blanket to keep her warm, said the social worker, Hala Shreim.

“The bathroom was only 1-1/2 metres big, it was like a cell,” Ms Shreim said.

According to a statement issued by Palestinian police, the father, citing a “family dispute”, admitted to locking up his daughter and feeding her mainly bread.

Ms Melhem told Voice of Palestine that her father used to shave her hair and her eyebrows, and allowed her to shower only once a month. He would let her out of the bathroom every night at 1am to clean the house until 4am, she added.

The social worker said Ms Melhem’s father often encouraged his daughter to commit suicide. Ms Shreim said: “Her only consolation was a radio which kept her connected to the world.”

Ms Melhem has now been reunited with her mother.