Last updated at 10:31 07 April 2008

A father and daughter confessed on television last night to spending seven years in a sexual relationship and conceiving two children.

Jenny Deaves told how she was reunited with her long-lost father, John, 30 years after he left her mother.

She was 31 when they met again but instead of a normal father-daughter relationship, they fell in love.

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John and Jenny Deaves, with daughter Celeste, say they are a normal, happy family

As their own marriages failed, they became intimate.

"John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults," Jenny told Australia's 60 Minutes programme last night.

"We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding."

They showed their nine-month-old daughter Celeste, who appeared fit and healthy - although their first child died of a congenital disease within days of birth. Jenny, who has two children from a previous relationship, is now 39.

She said that soon after reuniting with John she saw him as a man first and her father second.

"I was looking at him, sort of going, oh, he's not too bad," she said. "Like you might look at a man across the bar at a nightclub."

Mr Deaves 61, who lives with his daughter in the town of Mount Gambier, South Australia, admitted he "initially" thought having sex with her was wrong, but "emotions took over".

"I knew it was illegal, of course I knew, but you know, so what," he said.

Jenny said the physical relationship with her father was like "a sexual relationship with any other man". Mr Deaves said it was "absolutely fantastic".

Last month Jenny and her father were placed on a good behaviour bond for three years by a judge in Mount Gambier after admitting two counts of incest.

A condition of the bond is that the couple do not have sex again. A police spokesman said they "were being monitored".

The father and daughter claimed on air that they have ended the sexual side of their relationship and would find it easy not to sleep together again because of the risk of imprisonment.

"We will continue living as a normal, happy family for years to come," Jenny said.