‘For 18 years I was a prisoner of my father’: how they tried to make a superhuman out of a girl

Now Frenchwoman Maud Julien is a psychotherapist, author of the book ” A Daughter’s Story” and a mother of two children who tries to live an ordinary life. For a long time, such seemingly simple things as communication with peers, love and affection, were inaccessible to her – and all because of her father’s obsession to create a superhuman. Despite the “concentration camp” created by him, the girl found the strength not to give up, to live on and even to create her own family.

The mother of the future superhuman

Her story began at the moment when the businessman – in the future her father – Louis Didier caught fire with the idea of creating a superman. According to the idea, he was supposed to be completely unemotional, have no fears and no socialization. In 1936 Didier made a deal with a couple of poor miners, buying them a six-year-old girl and promising to give her a decent education. She was not suitable for the realization of the plan, as she was already an adult. Therefore, at the age of 28, she became the mother of the future “superman”.

“Spartan” childhood

Since childhood, Maud was deprived of amenities: she slept on a bed without a mattress in an unheated room, did not communicate with peers, washed once a week in dirty water left after her parents. To prevent the girl from showing emotions, she was left in a dark basement with rodents and had a bell sewn to her clothes: any sound – both crying and ringing – attracted the attention of rats. And sometimes she was made to hold an electric fence for ten minutes for the same purpose. Her father believed that only when man learned to survive without any comforts and amenities could he become something more.

In order for Maud’s body to learn to cope with vitamin deficiency, she was fed bland food, excluding sweets, fresh bread and fruit. In addition, Didier was convinced that the ability to cope with intoxication is a useful tool and with its help you can learn any “enemy secrets”. Therefore, from the age of seven, every meal of the girl was accompanied by strong alcohol.

Also young Maud was taught various sports to increase her strength and endurance. The girl mastered fencing, horseback riding, swimming and gymnastics.

The girl tried to adapt to the conditions: she learned to move in the dark so that the bell did not ring, walked at night and secretly ate sweets and fruit. According to Maud, the only things that helped her survive in these harsh conditions were music, books and pets: a duck, a German shepherd and a pony.

The road to long-awaited freedom

Among other things, Louis Didier wanted his daughter to learn to play different musical instruments. “Only musicians survive in concentration camps,” he said. Maud mastered the piano, violin, saxophone, trumpet, accordion and double bass. Her father even hired a music teacher for the girl. That was her salvation.

The teacher, Mr. Molin, noticed the marks of beatings on the girl’s body and the frightened look in her eyes and decided to help. He offered the parents to hold lessons at his estate: supposedly there was an opportunity to practice on better quality instruments. Talking to the girl alone, he became convinced that his fears were justified.

The teacher helped Maud get a job in a shop of musical instruments, where she met her future husband. By that time Didier had already found a spouse for his daughter – a 50-year-old homosexual. But then again intervened Molin: he advised to marry Maud to a young student Richard, in which the girl was in love. Although the father was not happy about it, the daughter still blessed with the condition that she returned home at the first call and will take care of him. Needless to say, the girl never appeared in her native estate again.

A new life

She had to spend a lot of time in the hospital: to treat chronic diseases, liver problems due to alcohol and with teeth – due to insufficient hygiene. And she learned to communicate with people already in adulthood.

For a long time she did not tell anyone the terrible story of growing up. In 2019, Maud decided to tell her story to the whole world, publishing a book “A daughter’s story: 18 years I was a prisoner of my father”. The woman sent one copy to her mother, but she never admitted that she had mutilated the child’s life, believing that the daughter simply did not understand Didier’s ideas.

Only after a full course of rehabilitation, Maud was able to start a full life. She graduated from university, gave birth to two daughters and became a successful psychotherapist.