A man in Pakistan has been arrested after police discovered that his French wife and five children had been living in confinement and facing abuse for more than ten years. The case came to light when one of the couple’s sons managed to leave the house secretly and file a complaint with the police.
French woman allegedly held captive by husband for 12 years rescued in Pakistan https://t.co/CNpczvBpEt
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Acting on the complaint, officers raided the family’s home in Bara, a remote town in Pakistan’s mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
During the raid, police found the woman and her children staying in a small, badly damaged room. According to officials, all of them had bruises on their bodies, indicating long-term physical abuse.
The woman, identified as 54-year-old French citizen Sylvie Yasmina, and her children were rescued and later moved to a women’s shelter in Peshawar. Police said the family is now planning to return to France.
Wife says family lost contact with the outside world
Yasmina told police that her husband had effectively kept the family imprisoned since they moved from Australia to Pakistan in 2014. She said they had almost no contact with the outside world during that time.
In a statement given to police, parts of which were published by local media, Yasmina said her husband regularly beat family members and made their lives difficult every day. “We were deprived of our freedom. My husband didn’t take care of us the way a husband and father should. He beats us and puts pressure on our lives on a daily basis,” she said.
According to police, Yasmina was not allowed to meet other people. The family’s two older children were unable to continue their studies after moving to Pakistan. The three younger children, who were born in Pakistan, were never enrolled in school. A senior police officer told BBC Urdu that the family’s isolation had continued for years without outside intervention.
Authorities have not publicly revealed the identity of Yasmina’s husband. Police said he is a Pakistani national who was living illegally in Australia when the couple met.
The pair married in 2003 and lived together in Australia until 2014, when they moved to Pakistan with their two older children. Yasmina told investigators that she had no communication with the outside world after the move. “I felt that my future was already ruined, and the future of my children would also be ruined,” she said in her statement. Police are continuing their investigation into the case.
