<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

Do you remember the trial of Rosemary West in the UK in 1995? The name will probably not mean anything to you but I?m sure the case must be familiar.

Frederick West was arrested in 1994 for the murder of twelve young women whom he buried in his garden. Among the girls were two of his daughters. The rest were strangers. The police recovered the remains of the young girls some 22 years after the murders.

The West household came to the attention of the police after one of the murderer?s numerous daughters complained to her school friend that her father had raped her. The friend told her mother and she in turn mentioned it in passing to a police officer. All the Wests? underage children were subsequently removed from their parents? care and through careful questioning, the police came to know that one of the daughters, named Heather had disappeared sometime ago and the ?joke? in the family was that if the children didn?t behave they would end up ?under the patio like Heather.?

What the children said to the social services people convinced the police that there might be more than met the eye at the West household.

The police thought there was a chance they would find one body underneath the patio; they found twelve. West killed himself before his trial and his wife was subsequently tried and found guilty.

It emerged that West- with the help of his wife- has sexually abused all of his daughters and had sexual intercourse with most of them. The two who were killed were the only two who resisted. Brian Masters wrote a chilling account of the trial of Rosemary West; the book is available at local bookstores for those interested in this psychologically acute, legally penetrating but above all highly disturbing book.

I was discussing the book with someone who happened to be a rector at a girls only college and she stunned me when she said she had known of several cases of incest and that she had actually confronted one such incestuous father who had told her in no uncertain terms to mind her own business.

What did she do, I wanted to know. ?What could I do? Going to the police would have meant that the girl would have had to testify against him and then she most probably would have been removed from her family. Then what? As hard as this might be for you to believe, she is better off staying with her parents. God knows what could happen to her in a shelter or a foster home.? Could this be true?

Come to think of it we don?t have social services that make it a point to investigate suspected cases of incest. We don?t have reliable families willing to act as foster parents; our shelters are not designed to cater for this category of abused girls.

Why is that? Is it because we also think that the girls are better off living with a father who thinks he has a right to break his daughters in? This is too shocking for words.