A Russian woman who has been seen once in 26 years, since she left school, was discovered again after she appeared at a local council office in Russia asking for an ID document and a job. She had been seen once previously in 2006 during a trip to a clinic where she was deemed mentally capable.
Nadezhda Bushuyeva has revealed that she ate cat food and stale bread in order to stay alive, and had apparently not washed in 10 years. As her mother became ill and required hospital treatment, Russian officials turned up at the house to find dead cats, a rat infestation and other terrible living conditions.
It appears as though the woman was kept as an involuntary hermit, as her mother wished to protect her from the outside world, but that she was not kept physically against her will. Her mother told her that the outside world was too dangerous to enter.
Vasily Tovarnov, a local official, stated that the 42 year-old woman was very afraid of the outside world, he said:
"After she left school her mother 'protected' her, keeping her locked up at home."
When the woman was asked why she didn't leave, she said:
"Where would I be let out? I don't know anything or anyone. I haven't been anywhere. Since I finished school, I stopped going [anywhere] … I eat what I am given - cat food, bread and food that is rotten."
Social workers did know she existed and lived as a hermit but because her mother and herself were not classed as mentally unfit there was nothing that could be done to remove the daughter from the situation. When social-workers previously arrived at the property they never entered the house.
Larisa Mikhayeva, the head of the social care department in the Nizhny Novgorod region, said:
"The mother receives a pension and benefits, and groceries, and we repeatedly offered to issue a passport to her daughter Nadezhda, which she refused … A social worker often visited them, but they did not let the worker into the house."
Shockingly the social care worker says that Nadezhda has absolutely no interest in changing her lifestyle:
"We are persuading Nadezhda to change her lifestyle, but she says, 'I don't need this, I love the way I live, everything suits me'… It's very difficult to help people when they are healthy according to their documents, and to force them a different perception of life if the person doesn't want to change anything."
Many would believe that after 26 years of isolation and control by her mother the brainwashing of the woman is so ingrained that she can no longer make rational decisions for herself.
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