When you hear the tragic story of the French radio lady below, you may not believe that the barrier to the blind love of parents can sometimes be so harsh and barbaric.
Blanche Monnier is a beautiful lady with beautiful appearance in the 19th century. She and her noble family live in Poitiers, France, just 4 hours drive from Paris. Thinking that the life of a prestigious and rich lady would be filled with velvet, happily enjoying the blessings of her life, but unexpectedly because of love, Blanche had to pay a terrible price in hell on earth.
The strange disappearance of Lady Blanche surprised many people.
At the age of 25, Blanche fell in love with a poor lawyer. The couple fell in love passionately but very quickly, Blanche’s mother, Louise Monnier, discovered and vehemently opposed this love. Thinking that the lawyer was too poor to be able to match the noble status of Blanche, Madame Louise used all means to prevent them from meeting. Of course, all the mother’s efforts were unsuccessful, Blanche remained steadfast in the love she chose.
In 1876, Blanche suddenly disappeared without a trace. Not even her close friends or her lawyer knew where she had gone. Blanche’s mother and brother struggled for a while after her disappearance and then they had to get used to the truth. After many years, people no longer mentioned Blanche. The disappearance of the rich lady became an unsolved mystery, until 1901, the Attorney General in Paris suddenly received a strange handwritten letter. The anonymous letter denounced a terrible truth.
An anonymous letter denouncing the incident sent to the Attorney General.
“Dear Attorney General, I would like to inform you of a terrible incident. There was an unmarried woman imprisoned in Madame Monnier’s house. For the past 25 years, she’s been living a ghostly existence, starving and filthy on her own pile of trash and waste.”
The denunciation letter made the police force bewildered because no one could believe that the noble lady of the Monnier family could do such a terrible thing. Louise has always been a respected person in Paris, she belongs to the aristocracy and has been awarded many awards for her tireless contribution to the community.
The police team sent to check on Monnier’s house was evicted by their family. However, the police officers were very aggressive, using force to push the door into the house. They scoured the house and discovered a tiny room with a terrible smell on the second floor. When they opened the door, the police nearly vomited from the strong stench emanating from the damp, dark room. black as ink. In the midst of a pile of garbage, they were horrified to see a thin, boneless woman without a piece of cloth lying on a rotten mattress. It was none other than Blanche.
Unexpectedly, Blanche was kept in a dark, damp and dirty room for 25 years.
“Miss Blanche is surrounded by waste, moldy food. We also saw pieces of oyster shells, and worms crawling on her bed. The air was so thick it was impossible to breathe and the stench in the room was so terrible that we couldn’t stay any longer to investigate,” said a police officer present in the room.
For 25 years, Blanche never disappeared, but was held captive by her mother and brother in her own house. In a tiny dark room without a single window, Blanche had no contact with anyone but her mother, brother, and the maid who would come and throw her some leftovers from time to time. Blanche was not even clothed, not bathed. They imprisoned Blanche with the requirement that she must give up her love before being released, but until 1885, her lover died, Blanche continued to be imprisoned in the dungeon.
For more than two decades, that poor girl was only lying in one place, eating, sleeping or going to the bathroom in bed. That dark earthly hell doesn’t need any more violence to turn the once beautiful flower into physical and mental exhaustion. Gradually Blanche became a madman. When she was rescued and taken to the hospital, Blanche weighed just 24kg, could barely speak and was terrified of the sun – something she hadn’t seen in 25 years.
Blanche’s story was covered in newspapers and became the subject of many books and documentaries.
The testimony of Mrs. Louise and her son to the police said that Blanche was insane, mentally unstable, so she often shouted angrily. However, when the police contacted Blanche, they found her to be quite calm, even seeming to be happy to take a bath.
After being arrested, Ms. Louise had a heart attack and died 15 days later. Some say she died because she felt so guilty and regretted the horrible things she did to her daughter. In the book The Sequestered Woman of Poitiers: An Unprecedented Affair, written about Blanche’s life, it is recorded that her mother, coming before her death, changed her will, leaving the entire estate to her daughter to inherit.
As for Blanche’s brother, after going to trial, he received a sentence of 15 months in prison. He then appealed the sentence on the grounds that his mother was the one in power in the family and he tried his best to help his sister but failed, nor did he commit any violent acts against her. In the end, the court found him innocent. This is a decision that outraged the public.
Blanche is forever unable to heal mental trauma.
After a period of treatment in the hospital, Blanche gradually regained her health, regained some weight and was able to speak a few words. However, the mental trauma over the years made Blanche never able to become a normal person again. She was sent to live in a sanatorium in Bois and spent 12 years peacefully before dying in 1913.