Half-naked ‘mentally ill’ young woman rescued after family locks her up for five years
A half-naked "mentally ill" young woman was rescued by internet activists after being locked in a room for five years by her Chinese family after a dispute with her mother.
A half-naked "mentally ill" young woman was rescued by internet activists after being locked in a room for five years by her Chinese family after a dispute with her mother.
A group of internet users broke into an abandoned house in Xiaochang county, Hubei province, where she was kept after a local resident posted photographs showing her confinement on weibo earlier this week.
Zhang Qi, 24, was discovered lying half naked and half buried in litter in the house on Wednesday.
She is now recovering in a local hospital, the local news portal cnhubei.com reported.
Doctors said that Zhang was suffering from muscle wastage because she had not been able to move for the past five years.
The original report did not say how the resident had come to take the photographs, but it is believed the person sneaked up to the building to take the pictures through a window after learning that Zhang was being kept locked inside.
A local policeman was quoted as saying that Zhang had reportedly begun to suffer from a mental illness after her mother strongly objected to her starting a relationship with a distant relative in 2009.
She was locked her inside a room in the abandoned house and then taken care of by her grandfather.
Zhang’s family, who had tried unsuccessfully to stop the activists freeing her, claimed they had locked her up only because she had become violent after falling mentally ill.
The mother, identified only by the surname Ye, told the website that they had tried to find a cure for her daughter at several hospitals, but she had only grown worse.
“When she got ill, she would take off her clothes,” Ye was quoted as saying.
“If we helped her put the clothes back on, she would start to tear them up, and then run out into the street, where she would hit people, including her brother, with bricks.”
Neighbours of the family were quoted as saying that they had often heard Zhang shouting – mostly curses against her mother – and sometimes crying out for food.
The political and legal commission of Xiaochang county was paying for Zhang’s treatment while she recovered at the Social Welfare and Medical Rehabilitation Hospital in the nearby Xiaogan city, the report said.
