Water-boarded by a gang of robbers in her £7m home: Masked intruders torture grandmother, 73, for three hours to make her open a safe

Tortured: Grandmother Francoise Jansen was subjected to hours of torture by two masked intruders

A grandmother feared for her life when raiders burst into her £7million home and subjected her to a water-boarding ordeal.

Francoise Jansen, 73, had boiling water poured down her back after being stripped by the men who threatened to cut off her fingers if she didn’t open a safe.

The two masked men had used a ladder to break into the widow’s house through a bedroom window. They crept downstairs and surprised her as she watched the Olympics on television.

After grabbing more than £150,000 worth of jewellery from one safe they demanded she open a second, larger one under the stairs.

But the safe, which was empty, had not been used in 12 years and Mrs Jansen could not open it despite remembering the combination.

That led to a terrifying three-hour ordeal in which the attackers used waterboarding – a form of torture in which the victim is made to feel they are about to be drowned.

The men took underwear from Mrs Jansen’s bedroom and forced it into her mouth before dragging her into the en-suite bathroom. They pulled her head back over the bath and covered her face with a towel they kept flooded with water from the shower head.

‘They did this to me three times but I just couldn’t open the safe,’ she said. ‘I kept telling them it was empty but they didn’t believe me.’

Mrs Jansen, who lives on a private estate in Weybridge, Surrey, told the Mail: ‘I was absolutely terrified, I thought they were going to kill me.

‘They asked me if I had any grandchildren, I told them I had ten and they said “We are going to kill you, do you think your grandchildren will miss you?”

‘I was consumed by fear. It was sheer hell and all I can remember is praying.’

Her six-bedroomed house had been broken into several weeks before the attack last Friday and Surrey Police believe the raiders had located the two safes at that point.

Mrs Jansen, who had spent the early part of the day of her ordeal with friends at the Olympics fencing, said the men first attacked her in the bedroom.

‘One of them was forcing my head down on to the bed as the other one went down to the safe,’ she said.

‘He kept saying have you got any money and I kept telling him I didn’t.

‘As I was on the bed I tried to press a panic button, I was an inch away but they saw what I was trying to do and from then they started to get really angry.’



The raiders got a kettle from the kitchen and poured boiling water over her back and arm but Mrs Jansen was still unable to help them open the safe.

The two men broke into Mrs Jansen's six-bedroom Surrey home as she was watching the Olympics on Friday night

After the waterboarding, one raider threatened to cut off one of her fingers with a pair of secateurs but the other shouted back: ‘No, the f***ing bitch will bleed to death.’

Mrs Jansen said: ‘Then they tied me to the towel rail with cable they had ripped from a nearby radio, they cut off my trousers and T-shirt with scissors.

‘I was trembling because I thought they were going to rape me and I just kept praying.

‘I was semi-conscious but eventually I realised they were gone and I had to bite myself out of the wires to get free.

‘I cannot describe the relief when the police eventually arrived I felt like I had been through sheer hell and I was terrified that I was going to die.’

Mrs Jansen had been living alone in her detached mansion since her husband Peter, a businessman, died suddenly in 1998 aged 58.

But she is now too petrified to return to her home and plans to live with her youngest son, Chris.

The 42-year-old senior executive for British Gas, said: ‘We are very keen that the people who did this are caught so we can get closure for my mum.

‘And also because these people will strike again and then it could be even more violent. My mother is very lucky to be alive, someone has to make a stand.’

Detective Inspector Jake Nuttall of Surrey Police said: ‘This was an appalling unprovoked attack on a defenceless elderly woman in her own home.

‘Surrey Police is carrying out a thorough and extensive investigation to bring these cowardly offenders to justice.’