For 12 years, Sylvie Yasmina and her five children were allegedly held prisoner in a cramped, dilapidated room in the remote Pakistani town of Bara, beaten daily by her husband — until one of her sons managed to sneak out and file a police report.
Police raided the house in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and found Yasmina and her children in an “extremely dilapidated room”, with bruises all over their bodies. Her husband, a Pakistani national who was “residing illegally” in Australia when the couple met, was arrested.
“French mother Sylvie Yasmina allegedly held captive by husband in Pakistan for 12 years, rescued after son sneaked out to police.”
Yasmina, a 54-year-old French national, told local police through a statement that her husband had “effectively imprisoned” the family since they moved to Pakistan from Australia in 2014. She claimed he assaulted them physically and mentally “on a daily basis” and described him as “very violent”.
According to a senior police officer, Yasmina said she was not allowed to meet anyone. Their two older children had missed their studies, while the three younger children were born in Pakistan and never enrolled in school. Yasmina said she had no communication with the outside world from the moment they arrived.
“We were deprived [of our] freedom, my husband didn’t take care of us the way he should as a husband and the father of my children. He beats us and put pressure on our lives on a daily basis,” Yasmina wrote in a statement to police, parts of which were published by local media.
“I felt that my future was already ruined, the future of the children would also be ruined.”
The couple married in 2003 and lived in Australia until 2014, when they moved to Pakistan with their two older children. Yasmina and her children have now been taken to a women’s shelter in Peshawar and plan to move back to France, police said.