Horrified neighbours have been left shaken after a man dubbed ‘Poland’s Josef Fritzl’ was arrested on suspicion of torturing a woman and keeping her as a sex slave in a barn for four years.
Mateusz Jach, 35, was charged last week with mental, physical and sexual abuse, after a woman, named only as Malgorzata, also in her 30s, arrived at bruised and battered at a hospital.
The pair were said to have met on a dating app in 2019 before Jach took her to a disused animal barn on a farm where he lived with his parents.
The victim was subjected to rape, beatings and would be hosed down with water whenever she failed to meet her alleged abuser’s demands, it has been claimed.
Now, it has been revealed by locals that Jach was the ‘village’ weirdo and they suspect he had a sound-proof lair as no one could hear the victim’s screams, as his parents revealed their shock.
A victim, only known as Malgorzata, 30, was imprisoned in a disused barn after meeting a man via a dating website in 2019
The suspect only known as Mateusz J, who denies the charges of mental, physical and sexual abuse, was arrested on August 30
The home where Mateusz J and his parents live. It is alleged that he kidnapped a woman while on a date and held her captive for five years in a barn on the property
Pictured: Zofia, the mother of the alleged kidnapper. Neighbours described her as ‘sickeningly overprotective’
Over the years, Malgorzata was taken to hospital several times, with a broken arm, a broken leg and even to give birth, with the suspect reportedly forcing her to put the child up for adoption.
Last year, she was admitted to hospital for surgery for a damaged anus but it was only when she arrived bruised with a dislocated shoulder last week that authorities were finally alerted.
Despite the barn being located on a quiet residential street in Gaiki, with Jach’s parents house and a neighbour’s home just a few steps away, his father claimed they never heard any screams.
Locals living in the hamlet, which only has 250 residents and is near the south-western city of Glogow, told MailOnline Jach was known as the village ‘weirdo’ and was regarded as a ‘loner’ by most.
He would often not be seen in the day, instead would work in the garden at nighttime, sometimes seen with a torch as he walked through the large forest backing onto his family home.
Jaigetto Zdzistawa, in her 60s, lives next-door to the family with her garden running adjacent to the barn where Malgorzata was allegedly abused.
She had bought the property from the family three years ago but had little contact with them, with the mother refusing to let her come into their home.
Mrs Zdzistawa told MailOnline: ‘My husband works out here in the garden all the time and he never heard anything. If you look through the small window at the end, there are really thick walls and then inside there is another wall.
‘Because of the trees surrounding the barn at the front I couldn’t see anything and had no suspicions. I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t hear anything. The police probably know there is some sort of soundproofing in there.’
‘We would see Mateusz a few times, but he was quiet and came across as the weird one in the family. He didn’t have any friends and in the day he would sometimes just sit outside the barn staring for hours.
‘But mostly everything he did was at night, so from early on we knew he was strange.’
At one end of the barn, a car is parked inside along with a few tools, but the rest of the area is separated by a brick wall.
At the other end a small window, with a white lace curtain can be seen but upon peering through all that can be seen is another brick wall.
On the opposite side of the barn, a skull of a sheep sits sinisterly on a ledge.
His mother, who claims she did not know anything said: ‘There was never a situation when I even thought that someone might be there’
During her four year imprisonment, she also fell pregnant and was forced to give up the child
On one occasion Mateusz J allegedly broke her arm, her leg. Last year, she also previously required surgery for a damage to her anus
Malgorzata was reportedly held in a disused animal barn, and was subject to regular beatings, rape, and mental abuse
A row of trees planted to screen the barn from the road running through the village
At night, according to neighbours, Jach would sometimes cover up a falling-apart wooden barn opposite with curtains, with neighbours now believing he could have taken the woman there at night to wash her.
A garden path leads away from the barn into the large forest behind the family’s home while a group of fast-growing conifers were planted in front of the barn, blocking it from view from the main road.
‘I heard from the police that inside it was soundproofed and insulated so you could not hear anything. And behind the window there is also another wall,’ one neighbour, who asked not to be named, added.
Jach had only held odd jobs since leaving school and for the most of time has never worked, relying on his father’s pension to live off 300PLN – around £60 – a month.
The neighbour added that the suspect’s mother Zofia was very protective of him and once after overhearing her discussing Jach’s odd behaviour was confronted by her and shouted, ‘what do you want from our son?’
His mother, who claims she did not know anything told CrowdMedia: ‘There was never a situation when I even thought that someone might be there.
‘My husband was in the hospital in Zielona Góra for two and a half months and our son went to see him.
‘If she was there and knew that he was leaving by himself in the car, why didn’t she shout? Why didn’t she knock?’
She also told Gazeta Wyborcza: ‘We didn’t go in there at all. There was nothing there at all, so why bother.’
Last week, however, she said her son had brought a lot of women home but she had forbidden him from creating a ‘brothel’ inside their home, according to Polish media outlet Onet.
Meanwhile, his father burst into tears as he told the paper: ‘This is a shock for us. It’s impossible. My wife and I really didn’t see any girl here. It’s a shock for us.
‘It’s impossible. It couldn’t have lasted years, maybe a few months, but not that long, because it would have been revealed sooner.’
Some neighbours, however, find it hard to believe the parents knew nothing, with a few claiming the mother became isolated and stopped contact with a few women in the village around three years ago.
One local, who asked to remain anonymous, said: ‘He would look right at you and just stare. It was as if he was checking if anyone was noticing what he was doing.
‘I had a really good connection with the parents but around three years ago it stopped. All communication stopped. I don’t know, maybe the son asked his mother not to contact anyone. But it stopped three years ago without any reason.’
Another woman, who used to cycle to the shops with Jach’s mother, said: ‘I am scared right now, it is so raw and everyone is talking about it in the village. It has made the atmosphere weird in the village.
Pictured: Neighbour Jagietto Zdzistawa, who said: ‘Because of the trees surrounding the barn at the front I couldn’t see anything and had no suspicions’
Prosecutors say Malgorzota had been held captive in a stone barn previously used to house animals, only four metres away from his unsuspecting neighbours
They said she had no access to hygiene products, running water, a toilet, electricity or heating during her captivity in the stone structure devoid of light
The alleged abuser is said to have humiliated and controlled the victim, keeping her in complete isolation and only bringing her outside with a hood over her eyes
A window in the barn used as a prison with a false window and curtain
An animal skull placed on a window frame of the barn where the woman was held
Jach now faces up to 25 years in jail in a case that has been compared with one of Austria’s most notorious criminals, Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter captive for 24 years
‘I never went inside the house but the husband has cancer so the mother was taking care of him as well as her son. The mother was doing everything.
‘It’s really hard for the parents, I don’t think they would have known. The parents will need psychiatrists now to help them with all of this, it’s a lot.’
She added, however, that the mother was ‘sickeningly overprotective’ of her son who would sometimes appear out of nowhere in the forest when her granddaughter went running.
Others in the village have become upset in the suggestion that they are somehow complicit in the horror for not knowing what had been going on.
‘Nothing has upset me as much as some psychologist who was being smart on TV saying that we were complicit, that we must have heard something.
‘And look at what these walls are liked. The little window was bricked up from inside. What were we supposed to see,’ a woman named only as Mrs Barbara told a local paper.
Another man added: ‘Do you think that if someone suspected something, they wouldn’t do anything? I only found out about this case on Friday.’
The suspect is currently being held in custody while the police investigate. It comes after a local journalist at MyGlogow interviewed his alleged victim while she recovered in hospital.
‘I couldn’t tell the doctors the truth, I was afraid, and he threatened me that if I complained, it would get even worse,’ the victim told the outlet.
The victim said she was genuinely in love with Jach, who took her from Leszno, where she lived. She had left her two children from a previous relationship with her parents to live with the abuser but never returned.
Prosecutors say Malgorzota had been held captive in a stone barn previously used to house animals, only four metres away from his unsuspecting neighbours.
They said she had no access to hygiene products, running water, a toilet, electricity or heating during her captivity in the stone structure devoid of light.
They added that he humiliated and controlled the victim, keeping her in complete isolation and only bringing her outside with a hood over her eyes.
Jach now faces up to 25 years in jail in a case that has been compared with one of Austria’s most notorious criminals, Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter captive for 24 years, fathering seven children with her.
