A woman has spoken out about the torture she endured for years as a child at the hands of her abusive father. Maude Julien, who is now 60 and a renowned psychotherapist, was forced to hold onto an electric fence for 10 minutes at a time without showing feeling. The ritual, which she endured twice a week, was considered to be a test of her willpower by her father, who wanted to make Ms Julien superhuman". Decades later, Ms Julien, who now lives in Paris, has recorded her cruel childhood in her memoir The Only Girl in the World. She says she was subjected to 18 years of controlling and manipulative behaviour by her father. Louis Didier ... was an alcoholic and belonged to an esoteric lodge of Freemasonry which believed in the occult. Didier reportedly believed his daughter had been chosen as his protector, so sought to indoctrinate her and make her withstand torment by making her participate in cruel experiments. Once a month, Ms Julien writes, she was locked overnight in a rat-infested cellar to "meditate about death". Didier, who died aged 79 in 1981, adopted a six-year-old girl called Jeannine in 1936, who he groomed to become his wife. In 1957, Jeannine gave birth to his child, Ms Julien. The three lived in a remote mansion in northern France, which Ms Julien was forbidden to leave. Ms Julien says she was sexually abused between the ages of three and 13 by a labourer working in the estate. She eventually managed to escape her father when he allowed her to take music lessons.