A 27-year-old woman has been rescued after spending more than three months in captivity, where she was allegedly chained, raped, and tortured by 40-year-old Karel N. The incident took place in the basement of a house in the village of Sirem, located in northwest Czech Republic.The victim was kept in squalid conditions inside a “house of horrors,” where she was forced to eat and drink from a filthy dog bowl, drawing chilling parallels to the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned and abused his daughter for years.She finally managed to escape around 3 am on February 16, after desperately waking up neighbors pleading for help, the UK news outlet Daily Mail reported.”She had no hair and a thick chain with a huge lock around her neck, she was just skin and bones,” a local resident who assisted the terrified victim told the Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes.”She said he shaved her head and rarely gave her anything to eat, just sometimes a little bread and water from a bowl, like a dog,” the woman continued.”He stripped her naked, chained her up, beat her, raped her and did other crazy things to her,” she added.The resident and her spouse assisted in removing the chain from the victim’s neck using a bolt cutter before alerting emergency services and law enforcement.”She said that she was bound to a heavy bed. She succeeded in pulling the chain free and used it to exit through the window,” the locals said. The victim “managed to escape at night when he was not home,” they added.The authorities have arrested Karel N, who reportedly knew the 27-year-old victim and was considered ‘sociable’ by neighbours.Czech media disclosed that in 2021, Karel N previously detained and severely abused another woman in Kryry, Louny, after enticing her to his residence with employment promises following her job loss.Reports indicate he placed a dog head mask on the 22-year-old woman, suspended her with chains on all fours and administered electric shocks, while a female associate allegedly assisted him in the abuse.”She was then held in a torturous manner, one could even say tortured in various ways, and her human dignity was humiliated. There was also a certain form of sexual intercourse,” the Louny District Court president, Hana Bachova told CNN Prima News.The young woman escaped after being held captive for one day. He was previously sentenced to three years in prison for rape and deprivation of liberty but was released on probation in 2022 following a successful appeal. According to CNN Prima, Karel N assured the court that he would never commit such acts again, and the judge deemed his original sentence excessively harsh. He is in custody as he awaits trial for the recent abduction and abuse of his second victim.
‘Abducted, chained, beaten, forced to drink from dog bowl’: Woman escapes three-month of ‘Josef Fritzl-like hell’
