Shut away

Police discovered a woman whose family had forced her to spend her life in seclusion and squalor, Reuter reports from Naples.

Giuseppina Converso, 32, suffering from bedsores so severe that some had eaten through to her bones, lived in filthy conditions with her mother and brother in an apartment in a poor area of the city. She had been allowed to leave home only three or four times in her life. The mother and brother, believed to be mentally ill, were detained pending charges of kidnapping.