A 53-year-old woman from
Isernia near Naples was held captive for two months in the
bedroom of her house by a 22-year-old man from near Venice she
met in a Web chat room, police said Wednesday.
The man has been arrested for suspected abduction.
Police freed the woman after her eldest son told them he had
not heard from her.
Isernia police chief Ruggiero Borzacchiello told a press
conference the flat was "foul-smelling and in disarray."
He said the woman, "with bruises on her body, started to cry
and speak only when the police took the man away".
She told police that, after meeting him in the chat room, she
had gone to Venice to meet him in person, invited him to Isernia
and "that's when the nightmare began".
After a couple of days of normal behaviour, the 22-year-old
"changed behaviour, holding her, against her will, in the
bedroom, where he beat her up and forced her to meet her
physiological needs in a plastic container".
The woman told police that "she received one meal a day and
had had her ATM card and cellphone taken away".
The woman is a widow who lives off her late husband's pension
and with whom she had the son who reported the case to the
police.
Her other two children, the result of a subsequent
relationship, live with their father.
The woman is now in Isernia's Veneziale Hospital, where she
is also receiving psychological help.
The suspected captor, who replied "in an evasive way to
police questions", has been taken to Ponte San Leonardo prison.
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