Six brothers and their parents have been arrested in North Carolina after authorities charged them with molesting a young girl for nearly a decade, New York Daily News reported.
Arrested last week, charges ranged from statutory rape to multiple counts of sexually abusing a child over a 10-year-period.
The arrests came more than a year after the elder brother confessed the crime at the urging of his church elder in December 2012.
According to The Virginia-Pilot, the victim, who is now 16 and lives in Colorado Springs, was allegedly attacked from the age of 4 until she was about 14, Perquimans County Sheriff Eric Tilley said.
Court records show the abuse occurred from January 2003 through December 2012, the Associated Press reported.
"He sinned seriously. It was an evil that needed to be exposed," Dan Horn of Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, N.C., told the Virginia Pilot.
Eric Jackson, 27, the man who had confessed, and his five brothers - Jon, 25, Matthew, 23, Nathaniel, 21, Benjamin, 19, and Aaron, 18 - were arrested last week after they surrendered to Perquimans County Sheriff's deputies on charges they molested and raped a girl, Tilley told the newspaper.
The men's parents, John Jackson, 65, and Nita Jackson, 54, were charged with felony child abuse for allegedly knowing of the sex crimes and doing nothing about it, according to NYDN.
The brothers, including the girl, were home-schooled, authorities said.
After Eric confessed to the abuse, the girl and her parents were questioned by deputies. However, the girl's parents would not allow her to speak to investigators, Tilley told the station.
The brothers remain in custody at Albermarle District Jail, in lieu of bail up to $150,000 each.
"The only thing that can come out of this - good - is that, you know, this young lady gets some kind of closure, and, hopefully, she's strong enough ... to put it behind her and go on with her life," Tilley said, according to the station.
