German woman rescued after being held captive by husband for 12 years: Other horrific cases

French police arrested a German national as his wife was discovered after 12 years of captivity in the couple’s home in Forbach, eastern France. The woman was found naked and with her head shaved in a bedroom in the apartment, with many injuries, including broken bones, the police said on Monday. The 53-year-old had probably been tortured. She had multiple injuries and was taken to a hospital with fractures in both legs, and her fingers. According to police, the bedroom was barred off with metal wire at the residence in Forbach, eastern France, near the German border, and the woman managed to call police in Germany, who then alerted their French colleagues. The woman said she had been held and abused by her husband since 2011. According to the French broadcaster BFMTV, the 55-year-old man is accused of kidnapping, aggravated rape, and acts of torture and barbarism and is held in the eastern city of Metz, reports DW. As the investigation in the case is ongoing, we recall previous notorious cases of women or children being held captive in horrific conditions: Raped over 18 years Jaycee Dugard was 11 when she was kidnapped on her way to a school bus stop near San Francisco by convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife. She was repeatedly raped over 18 years and had two children fathered by Garrido. She was discovered aged 29 in August 2009 after Garrido took her to a meeting with his parole officer. The Garridos were both jailed for life. Bus driver gets 1,000 years Unemployed bus driver Ariel Castro was sentenced to life plus more than 1,000 years in prison in 2013 for the decade-long kidnap, rape and torture of two girls and a woman whom he snatched on the street. Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight were captured at 14, 16 and 20 respectively. They were kept in locked rooms in chains. Castro hanged himself in prison a month after his sentencing. Children chained to their beds In January 2018, 13 malnourished brothers and sisters aged between two and 29 were discovered by police after being held captive for years by their parents, David and Louise Turpin, near Los Angeles. Some were found shackled with chains and padlocks in their filthy home. One of the girls, aged 17, raised the alarm by escaping through a bedroom window. The Turpins were jailed for at least 25 years. Imprisoned by guru A Maoist cult leader who brainwashed and raped followers in his London commune kept his own daughter imprisoned for three decades before she escaped in 2013. Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, was jailed in 2016 for 23 years. His daughter Katy Morgan-Davies had never seen a doctor or a dentist before the age of 30. Seven babies with father Elisabeth Fritzl was imprisoned and raped over 24 years by her father Josef Fritzl, who kept her in the cellar of their family home west of Vienna until 2008. The case came to light when one of the seven children she bore became ill and had to be hospitalised. Found guilty of murder for the death of one of Elisabeth’s babies as well as incest, sequestration, grievous assault and 3,000 instances of rape, Josef Fritzl was jailed for life in 2009. Imprisoned in cellar One of the most famous abduction survivors is Austria’s Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted at the age of 10 by telecoms engineer Wolfgang Priklopil and kept prisoner in a dungeon underneath his house for eight years before managing to escape in 2006. Priklopil committed suicide on the night she escaped by throwing himself under a train. Kampusch wrote two books about her ordeal. Padlock around her neck In April 2023, a man in China was jailed for nine years for imprisoning his wife woman in a shack in freezing conditions with a padlock around her neck. The woman, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was abducted from her village in Yunnan and sold several times before being forced to marry the man, with whom she had eight children. She was freed after a video showing her chained to a wall was posted on social media. With inputs from AFP