The victim had "disappeared from the radar." The Nantes prosecutor's office announced on Wednesday that an 82-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman had been charged with the "kidnapping with torture or acts of barbarism" of a woman for several years in Saint-Molf, in Loire-Atlantique.

The victim, aged 45 and “psychologically fragile,” was hospitalized in a state of “hypothermia,” Nantes prosecutor Antoine Leroy told AFP, confirming information from the daily newspaper Ouest-France.

She was forced to live in the garden or in a garage attached to the house where the two people in question lived, he said.

Taking advantage of a moment while the man was watching television to “get out of the outdoor enclosure in which she was locked up,” the forty-year-old woman showed up at a neighbor’s house on October 14 at around 9:30 p.m. “Mostly undressed, she came and knocked on the window” and claimed to have been “held captive” for about five years, the magistrate explained.

“She ate porridge mixed with dish soap.”

The victim explained that she “lived in a shared house with another woman” until the octogenarian arrived. She was then “asked to leave the house and go live in the garden, either outside, in a tent, or in a garage attached to the house,” Mr. Leroy continued.

A search confirmed his story.

She was often locked in the garage. “She slept in extremely precarious conditions, on a deckchair. She defecated in a potty or in plastic bags. She ate porridge mixed with dish soap,” the prosecutor said. “She was prevented from going out,” he added.

On site, the police found that the garage door was blocked from the outside by concrete blocks.

“Disappeared from the radar”

"She is a particularly psychologically fragile woman and therefore in a vulnerable state, otherwise she would probably have defended herself differently. She managed to leave the house sometimes but she would return," he added. The victim "could spend entire days outside, in the cold, in the rain, and she also reported being a victim of violence."

The medical examiner prescribed the victim 30 days of total incapacity for work (ITT).

According to the prosecutor, the victim had "disappeared from the radar" since April 2022, the date corresponding to her divorce. "Her bank accounts were no longer active except when she paid large sums of money" to the accused.

These two people were taken into custody at the end of last week and “admitted part of the facts but considerably minimized them,” according to Mr. Leroy.

The two suspects indicted

They were then charged with "kidnapping with torture or acts of barbarism," a crime punishable by life imprisonment, as well as "fraudulent abuse" of "a person's state of psychological or physical subjection" and the "weakness of a vulnerable person."

The octogenarian was placed under judicial supervision, while the woman he lived with was placed in pre-trial detention.

The investigation continues in Nantes under the authority of the investigating judge.