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A British grandmother has told of her family’s nightmare eight-year battle costing them £150,000 in lost rent and legal fees against squatters who turned her French holiday home into a ‘den of iniquity’.
Alison Monnier, 58, and her husband Jean-Paul, 65, say they have received no help from the French authorities – in a country where squatters are protected under French law 48 hours after they get inside.
The couple finally reclaimed one of the small farmhouses in Brittany last year and were faced with a horrendous mess after the property was ransacked.
Fittings, doors and windows were broken and the kitchen had been stolen, along with expensive heaters.
The whole property was littered with drugs paraphernalia and hundreds of condoms which Mrs Monnier suspects may have been used to smuggle drugs.
The couple finally reclaimed one of the small farmhouses (pictured) in Brittany last year and were faced with a horrendous mess after the property was ransacked
Alison Monnier, 58 (pictured), say they have received no help from the French authorities
Speaking of her ordeal to MailOnline, she said: ‘They turned it into a den of iniquity, with weekend parties and a succession of shady visitors coming and going all the time.’
She and her French husband had owned the two houses on a large rural plot for 30 years and refurbished them both.
For several years they lived in one and rented out the other, but left France to move to Mrs Monnier’s original home on the Isle of Man.
Mrs Monnier added: ‘We had one tenant in one of the houses, but she left after a few months. He was really aggressive, and we couldn’t get him out.
‘Squatters are well protected under French law, but you can’t even get insurance on the property when there are squatters inside.’
The houses were left empty, according to Mrs Monnier. In 2015 the now squatter, who had been in prison for GBH and theft, broke into one of the houses and established himself as a squatter in there.
Fittings, doors and windows were broken and the kitchen had been stolen, along with expensive heaters
The whole property was littered with drugs paraphernalia and hundreds of condoms which Mrs Monnier suspects may have been used to smuggle drugs
Pictured: heaps of rubbish left by squatters in Mrs Monnier’s garden in Brittany, France
In 2015 the now squatter, who had been in prison for GBH and theft, broke into one of the houses and established himself as a squatter in there
A few months later, the original squatter’s brother moved into the other empty house in a hamlet near the town of Carhaix, and the Monniers’ problems doubled overnight.
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Mrs Monnier added: ‘At the time I didn’t really have a lot of money to go through the expensive legal process.
‘We kept popping back and tried to reason with them, but it was no use. They would just be abusive and call me “Rosbif”.
‘In France, once a squatter has been in your house for 48 hours, then you have to go through the legal process, so it’s pretty tough.
‘In 2018 my mother died and left me some money and we hired a lawyer, but he wasn’t a good one and we wasted another €3,000 (£2580) getting nowhere.
‘Then we hired a really good lawyer and bailiff last year and we finally got back into one of the houses last November, and we’re awaiting a final court decision on the second one next month.’
Pictured: a destroyed door at Mrs Monnier’s farmhouse in Brittany, France
Pictured: Mrs Monnier’s ransacked kitchen at her farmhouse in Brittany, France
Mrs Monnier and her retired master slater husband and two grown-up daughters spent two weeks just cleaning up the reclaimed property before the builders could even begin to repair the extensive damage.
She said: ‘It was really a disgusting state and so was the garden and everything. I was in tears for a lot of that time. They smashed doors, windows and Veluxes.
‘We stayed with our daughter nearby and one night about two weeks later, quite late in the evening, I had a funny feeling that we should go and check the property.
‘By pure chance, we caught them red-handed trying to break back into the house and we called the gendarmes.
‘Everything was locked and chained but they’d smashed the door. If we hadn’t arrived, they’d have been back in again.’
The two brothers, who are from French Martinique, even have own flats of their own nearby, according to Alison, and she intends to sue them for the damage they’ve caused.
In 2013, both men, now aged in their 30s, were jailed for between a year and 21 months for a vicious mugging an assault of a young man and his brother in the nearby city of Lorient for €60, according to local press reports. The two victims suffered no fewer than 30 cuts and bruises between them.
Mrs Monnier added: ‘These guys are anything but homeless – we looked around the property we found paperwork suggesting claims were being made of up to €500 (£329) a month in housing benefits from the government with my husband’s signature forged on documents.
‘At the moment, me and my husband, two daughters and two young grandsons are living in one of the properties and waiting to get the other one back next month, hopefully.
‘It’s been a horrendous journey and I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through it. We reckon it’s cost us about €160,000 (£137,581) in unpaid rent, another €10,000 (£8598) in legal fees, and I don’t even want to think about all the building costs.’
