An Argentine man has gone on trial accused of raping his daughter over a period of 20 years and fathering eight children with her.

In a case reminiscent of that of Austria’s Josef Fritzl, Domingo Bulacio, 56, is accused of a two-decade campaign of abuse against his daughter beginning when she was 15-years old.

Mr Bulacio was eventually arrested in January 2016 after his daughter took her youngest son, aged five, to the doctor when he became seriously ill.

The boy needed to stay in the local care centre for several weeks, during which time the daughter revealed to doctors who the boy’s father was.

According to local daily paper El Liberal, they had all lived in a house with one room and Mr Bulacio allegedly raped his daughter in front of the children.

When police went to arrest Mr Bulacio, he was found to have disappeared, and then spent 45 days on the run before being captured in a rural area 30km south of the city of Loreto, according to local reports.

He underwent a DNA test to establish paternity and was subsequently charged with sex crimes.

There are conflicting reports over the whereabouts of the victim’s mother, with Columbia’s El Tiempo newspaper saying she left the house, abandoning her daughter, aged 11, after “mistreatment” by her husband.

But according to Clarin, Argentina’s largest newspaper, Mr Bulacio’s wife died, and the other two of the couple’s three children went to live with relatives.

Six of the eight children Mr Bulacio allegedly fathered with his daughter are now living at a boarding school in the city of Santiago del Estero.