French captive offers Elisabeth support
Sunday, May 04, 2008
A French woman who was tortured and raped by her adoptive father for 28
years and has six children by him wants to be friends with an Austrian held
captive for decades by her father.
Lydia Gouardo (45) spoke out about her case after the Austrian woman's
plight became public last week with the arrest of her father.
"I would like her to be my friend. I would feel less alone,"
Gouardo said of Elisabeth Fritzl.
"Maybe there are others like that, in villages, where people close
their shutters."
Gouardo, who lives in a village 40 miles east of Paris, suffered up until
the death of her adoptive father in 1999. He began raping her when she was
10, according to her lawyer, Alain Mikowski.
He revealed her stepmother was aware and was convicted in a closed-door
trial before an appeals court in recent weeks for non-denunciation of a
crime and given a four-year suspended prison sentence.
Lydia Gouardo, who never attended school and is illiterate, says she was
tortured by her father but not locked up. She says she fled the family home
several times while she was a minor, but police kept bringing her back.
"I was afraid of contact with the outside. ... What my father did, I
thought it was normal," she told Le Parisien. "I only ran away
when he hit too hard."
