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Daughter says Klaus Kinski raped her

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Daughter says Klaus Kinski raped her
Photo: DPA

Pola Kinski, daughter of legendary German actor Klaus Kinski, has told a German magazine that she was sexually abused by her father over 14 years from the age of five.

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"He ignored everything, including that I tried to defend myself and said 'I don't want to,' " Pola Kinski told Stern magazine in an interview to be published on Thursday. "He didn't care. He just took what he wanted."

At the age of 60, Pola Kinski is the actor's eldest daughter by his first wife Gislinde Kühlbeck. After her parents' divorce in 1955, she initially lived with her mother but then moved out when her mother met another man.

In the interview, Kinski's daughter said that he would take her with him as he worked around Europe. Often he would shout at her, throw her against a wall, rape her, then shower her with luxury gifts. She added that her father turned her into "his little sex object, bedded on a silk cushion."

Pola, whose father died in 1991, said that her entire childhood was marked by a permanent fear of Kinski's outbursts. "When I saw him in films, I always thought that he was exactly like that at home," she said. "He really abused everyone. He never had respect for other people."

With three children of her own, Pola had a lot of early success as a theatre actress, and took roles in several German TV movies, though she has now largely retired. Her book about her childhood and youth is to be published soon.

She told the magazine that she wrote the book because she was sick of listening to praise of her father. "I couldn't take it anymore: 'Your father! Great! Genius! I always liked him!'," she said. "The idolization has got worse and worse since he died."

The Local/bk

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