Maude Julien: 'How I escaped from my father's cult'

Maude Julien’s father tried to turn her into a ‘superhuman’ through a series of cruel experiments. Now aged 60, she recalls how she survived her her horrifying upbringing and began to lead a happy and well-balanced life

In 1936, a 34-year-old French businessman called Louis Didier struck a bargain with a poor mining couple in Lille: he persuaded them to give him their six-year-old daughter, Jeannine. Didier would provide the girl with material security and a university-level education and in return, her parents would never see her again. For Didier the handover was a day of grave significance, the first big step towards realising his life’s ambition.

His plan was to use Jeannine to give him a child that he would then sculpt into what he envisaged would be a superhuman. The child would be raised to be able to survive concentration camps and withstand torture under interrogation. Didier’s confused and hostile worldview took shape during the years between the First and Second World Wars and he was convinced that, if properly physically, mentally and emotionally trained from birth, it would be possible for a person to transcend normal human reality. He embarked on his project.

Maude, age five, was fed spirits then made to perform hard tasks

The link between the predator and the victim is in all cases the fear

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2GnwXAa