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A man and woman have been charged with kidnapping torture After allegedly holding a 45-year-old woman hostage in her own garage for five years.
The victim is said to have lost 50 kilograms of weight during the horrific ordeal, which allegedly included bathing her in bleach, forcing her to defecate in a potty and plastic bags, and forcing her to eat oatmeal mixed with dish soap.
His bank accounts and social security benefits were also drained while he was held prisoner in a garage in a village near Sanit-Molf in western Loire-Atlantique. Franceaccording to franceblue,
Prosecutors said she managed to escape on October 14 when she rang a neighbour’s doorbell for help at around 9.30pm, while one of her captors was watching TV.
Police have since arrested an 82-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman and charged them with “kidnapping with torture or barbarity”. Authorities have not released the names of the victims or suspects.
The victim was sharing a flat with another woman who worked as a nursing assistant at the nearby Guerande Hospital. Her roommate met an older man who later moved into the property.
Nantes The prosecutor, Antoine Leroy, said that at this time the victim was kept in a tent in the garden and later let into the garage, where she slept on a deckchair.
Investigators found evidence that the garage door was “blocked from the outside by concrete blocks,” Mr. Leroy said. The woman was reportedly kept outside for several days in the rain or cold and was suffering from hypothermia when she was rescued.
“He was washed with bleach, there was dish soap in his food, he was given medication,” said a source close to the investigation. franceblue,
The neighbor who opened the door for the woman said he had not seen her for several years and thought she had left the area.
“You can’t leave someone outside in psychological and physical distress,” the neighbor said. “I brought her in, covered her, gave her water. It was very complicated. She was in distress. I saved this woman, I provided aid, that’s all.”
Mr Leroy said the victim was “a particularly psychologically fragile woman and therefore in a vulnerable position”, otherwise she “could have defended herself differently”. He told that she left the house several times but kept coming back.
Officials said the woman had “disappeared from the radar” since April 2022. Her bank accounts reflected a “sudden change in her lifestyle” from this date.
“His bank accounts were no longer active except for paying large sums of money to the couple,” prosecutors said. The Parisian.
The man and woman living at the property, who were arrested last week, have since been charged with “the criminal act of kidnapping accompanied by torture or an act of barbarity”, as well as “fraudulent abuse” of a person in a state of psychological or physical subjugation and “vulnerability of a vulnerable person”.
The woman has been sent to custody, while the man is under judicial surveillance.
The investigation is still going on.