20 September 2023 , 13:06
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Neighbours of the incestuous couple in Poland claim that they heard a girl screaming from the property where dead babies were found.
In a case that has shocked villagers, father Piotr Gierasik, 54, and daughter Paulina Gierasik, 20, were arrested and face life in prison after three dead babies were found in their basement. The pair from Czerniki, in northern Poland, were in an incestuous relationship and it is thought Paulina mothered some of the babies.
The corpse's remains were discovered in shallow graves and wrapped in plastic bags in the dingy basement amid fears there may be further bodies. An unnamed neighbour told Telegraf they suspected something was wrong with the family as they "often heard him [Piotr] yelling at the children, and sometimes we heard Paulina screaming as well." They also said Gierasik shaved Paulina's head so other boys wouldn't look at her. According to the prosecution, the two murdered children came from a relationship between a father and daughter, who said she was in a relationship with him of her own free will. The third baby is from the father's relationship with his second daughter after he allegedly raped her.
Social workers acting on a tip-off found the rotting bodies of the newborn infants hidden in the depths of the house (Onet/Martyna Bielska)A woman described by local media as being close to the family told Fakt newspaper: "One of the daughters once gave birth to twins, the circumstances of this case are unexplained, the children disappeared. About 2-3 years ago, one of Piotr's daughters was pregnant with twins. Now we start to remember everything." She said Gierasik took his daughter to a town around 100 miles away to give birth, where he assured social workers that everything was fine. She continued: "They believed him, but now no one knows what happened to these children. Why did he take her such a long way?"
Police had conducted a visit at the property after receiving a disturbing tip-off from social services, but while searching the house they could not escape a horrifying smell coming from the basement. Two of the babies had been stuffed in plastic bags and buried in a shallow grave in the soft ground beneath the house. A third, believed to belong to another of Gierasik's daughters, was left to decompose. According to prosecutors there "is no doubt that the children were murdered."
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Joanna Mikołajska, head of the Social Welfare Centre in Stara Kiszewa said: "We, as social services, cannot enter homes by force. We would have to have a specific report to have a basis for action. We always appeal for these reports. They can be anonymous. Now we have received such a signal and our action was immediate, but on a human level, we analyse everything. We wonder whether we did everything right, whether we could have done something more."