Woman held for 2 mths by man (3)

(ANSA) - Isernia, January 25 - 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.