He had kidnapped, tortured and starved for several months a 19 year old girl met on the internet before abandoning her in the wild: a man was indicted in Béziers (Hérault), with four members of his family, announced Friday the parquet.
On November 2, 2019, "an unconscious young woman was discovered by a mountain biker in an isolated roadside area in Vias (Hérault)," said prosecutor Raphaël Balland in a press release. "In hypothermia (22 °), lightly dressed despite low temperatures, weighing less than 40 kg and swollen face, she had been hospitalized in absolute emergency in Montpellier" and fell into a coma for nine days. The victim, originally from Châteauroux, suffered from serious social difficulties. She had joined in the summer of 2019, in Agde (Hérault), a 22-year-old man met on social networks, and was staying with this man and his brother.
"Forced to eat cat feces"
"From September 2019, he would have ill-treated her, locked her in a padlocked cubbyhole, tied, gagged, regularly beaten, living in a state of permanent filth, deprived of food and care and even sometimes forced to eat cat feces, "said the prosecutor. The young woman would also have been forced to pay back to her executioner her social benefits, "in particular to buy video games".
The two brothers were indicted on February 26 for forcible confinement in order to facilitate acts of torture and barbarity and extortion of the victim's means of payment. A third brother, placed under judicial supervision, their mother and his companion were charged with voluntary abstention from preventing a crime or an offense against the integrity of the people. The 44-year-old mother is also accused of modifying the crime scene to obstruct the discovery of the truth. The Béziers prosecution also asked for the indictment of the two brothers and their mother for "attempted assassination" for having abandoned the victim in the middle of the night, "dying and very lightly dressed, despite the winter temperatures, in an isolated place ". This request for investigation for attempted assassination was rejected by the investigating judge, but the public prosecutor's office appealed against this refusal.