Maude Julien, seen as a little girl, said she was regularly forced to grab hold of an electric fence without showing any pain by her father Louis Didier. Photos / Supplied
Warning: Distressing content
A woman has revealed how her father tortured her as a child to try and turn her into a "superhuman".
When she was just eight years old, Maude Julien was forced to grab hold of an electric fence twice a week without betraying any sign of pain or emotion.
Trapped at her "insane, alcoholic" father's isolated mansion in Northern France, Julien was subjected to his experiments to try and create the "ultimate survivor", according to the Daily Mail.
She'd routinely be locked in a rat-infested cellar to "meditate about death" and was forced to take brutal endurance tests which could range from being held over the edge of a cliff, to being forced to down whisky and walk in a straight line.
Julien, whose mother also lived with them, wasn't even allowed a hug, as human contact was banned.
She says that the compassion and warmth she learned were from her animal companions; her dog and two ponies.
"I really think that, without my animals, I wouldn't be alive today," she told the New York Post. "They gave me physical contact and warmth because nobody [in my family] was allowed to touch each other in the house."
Julien, now 60, spent 18 years being physically and emotionally abused by her paranoid father Louis Didier, according to her new memoir The Only Girl in the World.
"He was most definitely insane and an alcoholic,'" she said of Didier, who she said was in a Freemasonry cult that dabbled in the occult.
Didier believed the world was going to end and that he needed to train his daughter to become the Savior who would lead an uprising against evil.
Julien revealed how her father had adopted her mother Jeannine when she was just six years old, and groomed her to become his wife.
Jeannine gave birth to Julien in 1957, and Didier, who became rich by selling transport stock after World War II, began putting her through his twisted experiments to try and create a "superhuman".
The tests could be physical or mental.
In one, she was forced to slaughter livestock. She was regularly forced to grab hold of an electric fence without showing any pain.
"I held on with both hands, and it was most important to show no reaction at the moment of the power surges," she told The Post. "I had to stay impassive.'"
To this day, Julien still carries the mental and physical scars her father left her with. She has liver damage from all the alcohol her father forced on her as a young child.
She says she was also sexually abused by a labourer on her father's estate from the ages of 3 to 13.
She would escape from the horrors of her childhood through books and became an avid reader - her favorite being The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
But it would be years until she was finally free of her father for real.
In 1972, Didier allowed music tutor, Andre Molin to come to the estate to teach her to play the accordion and piano. She says that he visited her for three years, slowly gaining her father's trust, and encouraging him to let him teach her at his shop in town.
When she was 18, Didier agreed to let her marry a musician she met at the music classes on condition that she left him after six months - and returned to the house a virgin.
But as soon as she married, Julien seized the opportunity and fled. Forever.
Didier died in 1981 at age 79.
Julien went on to live a full life, remarrying and having two daughters. She is now a grandmother living in Paris.
She has also undergone intense therapy to overcome her traumatic childhood and is now a psychiatrist with patients of her own.
Julien says writing her memoir was still a harrowing experience, which triggered flashbacks, but was also therapeutic. She had also wanted to create "an escape manual".
The book is dedicated to her mother who Julien remains estranged from.
"She is a victim and I sent the book to her with a note," she said. "She didn't react directly but I heard through intermediaries that she was afraid and wasn't happy I wrote it."
An independent investigation found the Archbishop of Canterbury didn't go to police in 2013 when he learned of the abuse.