Overview
- One child escaped to a police station and filed a complaint, and police who searched the home on Wednesday found the 54-year-old French woman and her five children in a cramped, dilapidated room with visible contusions.
- Pakistani authorities arrested the husband on suspicion of prolonged sequestration and daily physical and psychological abuse, and they have opened an ongoing criminal investigation.
- The victim told investigators the family moved to Pakistan in 2014 and that she and the children were cut off from contact with the outside world and beaten regularly.
- Police reported that the two eldest children stopped attending school and the three younger children born in Pakistan were never schooled, raising urgent child-welfare and education concerns.
- The mother and children were placed in a local women's shelter while Pakistani officials pursue charges and French authorities work to arrange medical care and repatriation to France.