Charente-Maritime: a young woman kidnapped for three years by her mother and sister – teller report

A chilling story. A 25-year-old woman has lived in confinement by her family. Her own mother and sister held her prisoner for three years in a house in Bignay, a village of 400 inhabitants located in Charente-Maritime.

The facts date back to the night of August 24 when the Saint-Jean-d’Angély gendarmes intervened in the village of Bignay where a 25-year-old young woman had just fled from her home, the prosecutor said in a statement. Laurent Zuchowicz. She said “to be kidnapped for three years by her mother and sister in an unsanitary habitat, to have been assaulted on several occasions for having tried to rebel or to leave, to have been regularly deprived of meals and to endure unworthy living conditions, all in link with a religious rite followed to the letter by his mother and sister “.

Assertions corroborated, according to the prosecution, by medical examinations, investigative testimonies. “A previous procedure initiated in November 2020 following a report sent by social services, which had warned of the precariousness of this family”, was added to the investigation. A source close to the investigation explained that the young woman was living “in his excrement in a room with windows nailed by wooden planks in a filthy house, without water or electricity”.

The 58-year-old mother and 27-year-old daughter were charged with “criminal forcible confinement” and imprisoned, but only after a psychiatric examination and first compulsory hospitalization. In front of the investigators, the mother disputed the denunciations of her daughter. The other girl did not wish to speak. They each display a criminal record free of any conviction, according to the prosecution.

According to The New Republic, which revealed the case on Tuesday, “the conversion of mother and older sister to Mennonitism” – a movement also known as Mennonism dating back to the 16th century and belonging to Protestantism – may explain why the three women fell back on them- same.

“We are not in a case of sect, but there is a problematic either religious or mystical between three people who have high intellectual levels. The mother, in particular, studied psychiatry”, declared Tuesday during a public hearing of the chamber of the instruction of the Court of Appeal of Poitiers the Advocate General Stéphane Chassard, quoted by the newspaper.

During this hearing, the provisional detention of the 27-year-old suspect was maintained, explained to AFP the latter’s lawyer, Me Julien Sevet. In this case, the victim filed a complaint against his mother, but not against his sister, said Mr. Sevet, who did not wish to discuss the alleged religious aspect of the case. On the other hand, he denounced a “quack” of the “Saintes prosecutor’s office and / or social services” in the treatment of findings on the family made in 2020.