Kuala Lumpur - Four Malaysian girls have filed a police complaint against their stepfather, an unemployed Indonesian, alleging that he raped and sodomized them for four years, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The sisters, aged between 12 and 19, were afraid to tell anyone about the abuse. They finally confided to a female relative on Thursday at a wedding, who then took the girls to the police.

The abuse allegedly started in January 2005 at their home in central Selangor state when their mother went to work at a nearby restaurant, the New Straits Times reported.

The girls claimed that their stepfather had threatened to harm their mother if they told anybody about the abuse, a police spokesperson said.

State police chief Hasnan Hassan confirmed the report but declined to elaborate. (dpa)