For months France has followed the bizarre and tragic case of Madame Broussard, whose tale seems to come straight from the pages of Dickens or Zola. Earlier this year she was discovered living as a tenant—malnourished, suffering from arthritis and asthma and disoriented—in what appeared to be a shed behind the middle-class, suburban home in nearby Chatou owned by Franchise Saunier, 75, and her husband, Jacques, 76. What was more startling was the fact that Broussard, who weighed 85 lbs. when she was found, had been there for 30 years, cut off from all human contact except with the Sauniers. "We're all completely shocked," says a local letter carrier, who has been delivering mail to the Sauniers for 18 years. "I've been on the property and never saw anything."
The arrangement between the Sauniers and Broussard appeared innocent enough at first. Broussard told police that she had arrived in Chatou in 1969, at age 34, with no place to live after the death of her mother, who had done some knitting for an apparel workshop owned by the Sauniers. The couple offered Broussard a place to stay in exchange for knitting work. Conditions turned out to be less than ideal. Broussard maintained that she had to use a garden hose for water and that the Sauniers, who left her modest amounts of food, asked her to stay out of sight. Her only consolations, she said, were listening to the radio, reading the Bible and poring over newspapers that she retrieved at night from garbage cans.
By 1980 her circumstances had started to take a physical toll, she said, and she had fallen ill. "I felt I had cannonballs in my body that made me cough," she told the newspaper Le Figaro. When she complained to Francoise Saunier, she said, the lady of the house offered only aspirin and cough syrup, with the result that Broussard's respiratory problems persisted.
Curiously, Broussard never tried to make contact with anyone else. One of the Sauniers' neighbors recalls that she used to catch glimpses from time to time of a woman near the shed, who would turn and flee, but that the sightings ceased about 15 years ago. As to why Broussard didn't leave, or at least ask for help, there seems to be no easy answer. ("I had nowhere else to go," she told reporters earlier this year.) Angélique Negroni, a reporter for Le Figaro who has interviewed Broussard, found her pitiably passive. "She felt she was a prisoner," says Negroni. "She's someone who submits, rather than reacting to a situation." Broussard was finally discovered last New Year's Eve, when police went to the Sauniers' home searching for a reported prowler and found her cowering in the shed.
Françoise Saunier vigorously disputes much of Broussard's account. For starters, her lawyer, Eric Verriele, insists that "shed" is not the mot juste for Broussard's living quarters. "It's a little house," he says. "You could call it a chalet." Semantics aside, Verriele does acknowledge that there was no toilet or running water in the place, and that starting three years ago, after Jacques Saunier suffered a paralyzing cerebral hemorrhage and his wife was forced to care for him, she neglected to supply Broussard with bottled gas for her heater. Nonetheless, he contends that his client, who was known in the neighborhood for her charity in feeding stray cats, had only Broussard's best interests at heart. "I just didn't want to make another person homeless," Francoise told him, explaining why she had never sent Broussard on her way. Verriele concedes that Saunier could have brought Broussard to welfare officials but claims that Broussard never voiced a desire to leave, and so the situation dragged on. In any case, on Dec. 21 Francoise is scheduled to face charges in court of supplying "unfit housing" and of violating France's Good Samaritan law by failing to come to the aid of someone in danger. "It's just plain unimaginable to her that this is the thanks she gets after all these years," says Verriele.
Whatever the outcome in court, Broussard seems to be doing reasonably well. She has gained some 25 lbs. and is comfortable in her state-subsidized apartment. She has new clothes and is taking art classes, paid for by a neighbor from Chatou. But her needs remain modest. All I want, she told reporter Negroni, "is peace and quiet. And I'd like to have friends."
Bill Hewitt
Cathy Nolan and Peter Mikelbank in Paris
- Contributors:
- Cathy Nolan,
- Peter Mikelbank.
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