Lydia Gouardo was born on 13 November, 1962, in Maisons-Alfort, France. During the pregnancy of Lydi
Lydia Gouardo was born on 13 November, 1962, in Maisons-Alfort, France. During the pregnancy of Lydia, her mother met Raymond Gourado. After the birth, her biological mother broke up with Raymond and later abandoned Lydia and her two siblings, leaving them in foster care. Her biological father was never present. Lydia spent the first three years of her life in foster care while Raymond was serving a prison sentence for armed robbery. Upon his release, he gained custody of Lydia, her brother Bruno and sister Nadia, and settled with the three children at a home in Meaux where they stayed until their move to Coulommes in 1975. However, Raymond had no plans to be a loving father to Lydia or her two siblings. Instead, he had planned to inflict horrific pain and suffering upon the children and their childhoods would be cruelly snatched away from them.Raymond had met a woman named Lucienne through an ad while he was incarcerated and she eventually moved into the apartment with the family. Lucienne called herself “mom”, but Lydia and her siblings knew she was not their real mother. The three siblings were subject to abuse that included beatings, burning, rape, both vaginally and anally, and would sometimes involve objects such as saws, hammers, and razor blades. Raymond would keep notes of Lydia’s menstrual cycle and repeatedly rape her so much so that she gave birth to six children all fathered by him. She recalled her stepmother giving her a scalding bath, inflicting third-degree burns upon her body that forced her to be taken out of school. During the bath, Raymond took a photograph of Lydia and forced her to smile. Lydia’s siblings lived the same ordeal. At age 15, Bruno complained to social services of mistreatment and got taken away and at age 20, Nadia left the house of horrors and never returned while Lydia remained. In 1996, Nadia went to the police and reported the rape and torture she had suffered during her childhood. Lucienne, their stepmother, didn’t participate in the physical abuse, but just watched and laughed while Raymond raped, beat and tortured the three siblings. While Lydia was imprisoned, she escaped and phoned legal aid, but Raymond captured her and, as a punishment, started to burn her with hydrochloric acid on the legs, arms and stomach. During her first pregnancy, at the age of 19, she was tied down for most of the 9 months to prevent her from possibly seeking an abortion. Each time she went into labour, she would only be taken to the hospital at the very last moment before giving birth. Lydia claimed to have not realised that the abuse was in fact unusual.Fortunately, in 1999, Lydia Gouardo was finally freed when her adoptive father, Raymond, died. Her stepmother, however, was later arrested and charged with the failure to report the crimes she was aware of and for the sexual abuse against one of Lydia’s children and was given a 4 year suspended jail sentence. Lydia appeared on TV shows and gave public interviews and claimed to still love her adoptive father, despite the abuse. After he died, she kept a photo of him in her pocket and explained how she planned to kill herself. In 2008, she released a book about her story titled: Le silence des autres (The Silence of Others). -- source link
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