For 28 years, Lydia Gouardo was kidnapped, abused and raped by her legal father, Raymond Gouardo. She had six children by him. However, “everyone knew”.
It was in 1962 that this sad story began. While her husband, Raymond Gouardo, is serving a five-year prison sentence for armed robbery, Jacqueline Gouardo becomes pregnant by another man. Against all odds, Raymond agrees to recognize the child. A chance for the little one Lydia Gouardo, who seems to have fallen on loving and responsible parents. However, this is not the case. Around the age of 2, Lydia and her elders, Bruno and Nadia, were abandoned by their mother and taken in by the DDASS. They spend several years there, until their father, Raymond Gouardo, comes out of prison and comes to claim his children, armed with a gun…
During his incarceration, Raymond met a visitor, a certain Lucienne Ulpat. With her and the children, he moved to Meaux, in Seine-et-Marne. It was then that for Lydia, Bruno and Nadia, life changed completely. Deprived of school, the three children are kept at home permanently, and the sequestration ensues violence. One day, when Lydia was 8 years old, Lucienne Ulpat gave her a hot bath. With bleach and a dog brush, Raymond Gouardo’s partner burns Lydia to the third degree. Following this, the girl will be hospitalized for three months. When he returns, his stepfather will take advantage of Lydia’s home care to subject him to touching. “He tells us that he makes us feel good. That he’s our father, that he has all the rights, that if we have food, it’s thanks to him…“, confided, later, Lydia Gouardo in the show thousand and one lives.
“It’s everyone at home, that’s all. It’s everyone at home”
From there begins another form of ordeal for Lydia. In 1975, the family moved to Coulommes, in Seine-et-Marine. Several times a day, Raymond Gouardo rapes his youngest daughter, as well as her brother and sister, Bruno and Nadia. On several occasions, Lydia runs away and warns the gendarmerie. Each time, law enforcement return her to her father, who will go so far as to chain her up in the attic and rape her with kitchen utensils to punish her. In 14 years, while Bruno and Nadia manage to flee, Lydia will give birth to six boys.
In the small village of Coulommes, there is misunderstanding. Who is this teenager that we sometimes see through a window? Where do these babies come from that Raymond Gouardo presents with pride? “Gouardo gives birth to his daughter”, will we finally hear in the streets of Coulommes. But then again, no one will do anything about it. “In my opinion, it’s everyone’s home, that’s all. For me, it’s everyone’s home”, will admit Nicolas Courbouin, a neighbor, during a report broadcast years later.
Neighbours, the police, the justice system, child welfare, “everyone knew, nobody said anything.” Due to the fear and indifference of others, Lydia will spend 28 years under the yoke of her father, who will die in 1999. On March 12, 2007, Lucienne Ulpat will be given a three-year suspended prison sentence for failure to report crime and sexual assault on Bruno, Lydia’s brother. Lydia, she will rebuild her life with Sylvain Skirlo, with whom she will have two children. In 2008, she will publish the silence of others, in which she will lay down her ordeal over hundreds of pages. His goal ? Speak. “I’m not the only one who went through what I went through, but people don’t talk about it, don’t say it, she confided in 2016 on France 2. I say we need to talk about it. My story has been made, we can’t go back. (…) But it must be said, we must stop being silent. To save other people.”
Now 60, Lydia still suspects her stepfather, Raymond Gouardo, of being involved in four disappearance cases: the Sabine Dumont case, the Virginie Delmais case, the Perrine Vigneron case and the Hemma David-Greedharry.
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