On October 14, 2025, in the peaceful hamlet of Kerudal, in Loire-Atlantique, the gendarmes collected the testimony of a 45-year-old woman, who had just fled the house where she had been held prisoner for five years. Thin, in a state of hypothermia and partially dressed, she told investigators about an extraordinary ordeal.
An escape that ends years of horror
According to West Francewhich reports this tragedy, the forty-year-old would have been kidnapped by her roommate and the latter’s companion, in the garage of a small house in the village. His living conditions were appalling: the victim slept on a deckchair, eating soiled remains, forced to relieve himself in plastic bags. She would have been “washed with bleach”“addicted to drugs“and was forced to eat one”porridge mixed with dishwashing liquid”. After five years of torture, she managed to escape and alert neighbors.
Obviously, no one was worried about his absence. Administratively, she had “disappeared” since 2022, the year of her divorce.
A couple suspected of mistreatment and abuse
Investigators arrested a sixty-year-old woman and her eighty-year-old companion, suspected of having kidnapped the victim. According to the Nantes public prosecutor, the couple also embezzled the victim’s social assistance and emptied her bank accounts.
They were indicted for acts of barbarism, fraudulent abuse of weakness and torture. The roommate was placed in pre-trial detention, while her companion was released under judicial supervision.
“It’s not just the body that we lock up, it’s the whole psyche“
Faced with such acts, the psychological consequences are immense. Psychologist Amélie Boukhobza explains its significance.
“It’s torture, barbarism! Sequestration of this type is necessarily extreme: we deprive someone of freedom, movement, sometimes even light and time. We mistreat it, we destroy it: bleach to wash, dishwashing liquid in the food! It’s not just the body that we lock up, it’s the whole psyche.” she gets excited.
How to survive such treatment? Our expert describes the mental resources mobilized.
“The mind inevitably goes into survival mode: the only thing that matters is to hold on. We try to rationalize as much as we can, but very quickly, the only possible refuge is dissociation, detaching ourselves from reality to bear the unbearable. Many then describe this period as a “gap”, a suspended time where nothing exists anymore.”
A slow and fragile reconstruction, for the victim
According to the psychologist, the regained freedom does not erase what the victim experienced. “When freedom returns, the body is active again, but the mind remains confined. The psychological consequences are heavy, very heavy even: post-traumatic stress, anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, hypervigilance… And then, there are more invisible traces: the loss of the feeling of security, of trust in the world, sometimes in others.
After such an ordeal, the road to reconstruction will obviously be long.
“It requires deep, patient work. Psychotherapy, and particularly trauma-focused therapies, such as EMDR, can help restore meaning where everything has been chaos.“, underlines the expert. “But it will not just be a matter of telling the victim what happened. We have to help the brain understand that it’s over, that the danger is no longer there, and that we are finally safe.”.
How long will this take? The healing time necessarily varies for each victim. “But it will be long” However, assures the psychologist. “We don’t move on like that: we learn to live with it, differently. Some people find some form of peace after a few months, while others take years. What matters is that trauma stops ruling life” she concludes.