A woman who claims to have been locked in a garage by a French couple who forced her to wash with bleach has managed to escape after five years in captivity.
The 45-year-old was held in the commune of Saint-Molf, north of Guerande, by an 82-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman who have since been charged with ‘abduction with torture or acts of barbarism’.
The victim, who claims she had been forced to live in the garden, in a small locked garage attached to the house, escaped the ordeal on October 14 when she fled to a neighbour’s house at around 9:30pm.
‘Mostly undressed, she came and knocked on the window’ and explained that she had been ‘held captive’ for about five years, Nantes public prosecutor Antoine Leroy explained on Wednesday.
The woman had reportedly been living in a shared apartment with another woman. According to FranceBleu, the roommate was a nursing assistant at the Guerande hospital where she met the elderly man and brought him home.
The pair then quickly locked up the woman, embezzled her money, her social security benefits, and emptied her bank accounts, as per the French news outlet.
Soon after the ordeal began, she was ‘asked to leave the house and go and live in the garden, either outside, in a tent, or in a garage attached to the house,’ Leroy continued.
He explained how the alleged victim slept in ‘extremely precarious conditions’ on a deckchair and was forced to defecate in a potty or plastic bags. She even had to eat porridge mixed with dish soap and wash herself with bleach, Leroy added.
A 45-year-old was held in a house in the commune of Saint-Molf, north of Guerande, by an 82-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman who have since been charged with ‘abduction with torture or acts of barbarism’
The woman was reportedly left outside in the rain and cold for entire days when she was allowed out of the garage by her alleged captors, and there had been no trace of her life since her divorce in 2022.
‘Her bank accounts showed a sudden break in her lifestyle, with no movement appearing since that date, the last bank transactions corresponding to transfers to the defendant’s account,’ Leroy explained.
But on October 14, she finally managed to break free from her living nightmare.
According to the prosecutor, she took advantage of a free moment while the man was watching television to get out of the garage without him hearing or seeing.
Upon her arrival at the neighbour’s house, the police were called. There, they discovered the frail woman who had lost nearly 50kg and was suffering from hypothermia.
‘She was washed with bleach, there was dish soap in her food, she was drugged with medication,’ Leroy said.
During searches of the house where the ordeal took place, investigators discovered evidence that supported the victim’s testimony, including ‘the garage door… blocked from the outside by concrete blocks.’
An investigation into the case remains underway, but when interviewed in police custody, the couple confirmed ‘the material conditions in which the victim lived in their home, while minimising their share of responsibility,’ explained Leroy.
The Nantes public prosecutor’s office has referred to an investigating judge ‘the criminal acts of kidnapping with torture or acts of barbarism committed from April 2022 to October 14, 2025’, as well as the ‘offenses of fraudulent abuse of the state of psychological or physical subjection of a person from 2019 to October 14, 2025 and the offense of fraudulent abuse of the weakness of a vulnerable person from 2018 to October 16, 2025’.
The pair, who were taken into custody at the end of last week, were then charged with ‘kidnapping with torture or acts of barbarism,’ a crime punishable by life imprisonment.
They were also reportedly charged with the ‘fraudulent abuse’ of ‘a person’s state of psychological or physical subjection’ and the ‘weakness of a vulnerable person.’
The man was placed under judicial supervision, while the woman with whom he lived was remanded in custody.
