WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTEN Lydia Gouardo escaped from her abuser as a child, but the police just delivered her back to him every time
A woman has spoken out about her horrific 28-year ordeal at the hands of her stepfather, during which she was beaten, tortured, raped and forced to bear six children with him.
Now aged 62, Lydia Gouardo lived under a reign of terror that lasted for 28 years and started in 1971 when she was locked up in an attic when she was just eight years old.
Despite escaping from Raymond Gouardo’s clutches several times in the first few years of her torment, Lydia was handed back to her abuser by the authorities in France every time, despite the attacks leaving her with burn marks across her body after being scalded with boiling water and hydrochloric acid.
After that, the abuse carried on right up until his death in 1999, without raising suspicion in the sleepy village of Crecy-la-Chapelle just outside Paris.
Her stepmother, Lucienne, also abused Lydia, who says the ordeal began when she was a child, when her mother forced her into a scalding hot bath, leaving her with third-degree burns and causing her to take time away from school.
Lydia came forward to share her story in 2008. Speaking to French Radio RTL, she said she was raped “in the morning, in the evening and the night” by Raymond Gouardo.
She also said her stepmother, Lucienne Gouardo, knew of the abuse and would simply tell her husband to “get on with it”.
Lucienne Gouardo was given a four-year suspended prison sentence for failing to prevent the abuse, but Lydia believes the world mostly turned a blind eye to her horrific experience.
She wrote a book about her story alongside French journalist Jean-Michel Caradec’h titled Le silence des autres (The Silence of Others), saying she only got the courage to speak out after the remarkably similar case of Josef Fritzl in Austria came to light the year before.
Fritzl’s case locked up his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years, during when she was similarly abused and raped, giving birth to seven of his children.
In that case too, neighbours, teachers and social services didn’t uncover the abuse or raise any alarm despite her pregnancies and injuries.
In Gouardo’s book, she says she wanted to become friends with Elisabeth so she could support her having lived through and survived similar traumatic experiences.
However, she also criticised the French and worldwide media for not covering her case at the time, with attention only coming after the Fritz case.
Now Gouardo lives in a small town just outside of Paris, having raised her nine children. She wears long clothes to hide the acid scars left on her, but says she takes life one day at a time.
She said: “I live from day to day. But I love life. When people complain, I say life is beautiful. I am fighting back now. When a bill comes through the door, I am happy. I am here, I exist.”