The end of a childhood horror story for eight brothers and sisters

It's a shocking story and one which hit the headlines on Tuesday afternoon here in France.

A couple have been taken into police custody and charged with neglecting and mistreating their children after police and social services discovered the wretched conditions in which they were living.

The case first came to the attention of the local authorities just last Friday in Banyuls-sur-Mer in the southwestern French department of Pyrénées Orientales.

One of their children was seen rummaging through dustbins. The 16-year old was bleeding from the head and visibly emaciated.

Passers-by informed the police and when questioned, he explained that he had been hit on the head with a pot by his mother and beaten on the arms with a stick.

He had been punished, he told the police, because he had stolen a lump of sugar.

The boy weighed just 32 kgs (71 lbs) for 1,65m (five feet and five inches) and was immediately taken to hospital for treatment.

When the police arrived at his home to question his parents, they found an apartment almost bare of furniture according to the regional daily newspaper, Le Midi Libre.

There were no beds, just covers that served as mattresses. The kitchen and the sitting room were locked and the fridge was virtually empty.

There were also seven other children in the apartment - one boy and six girls - ranging in age from seven to 17. They all showed scars and traces from having been regularly beaten.

Two of the girls, aged 13 and 15, weighed just 22kgs (48lbs) and were immediately taken to a nearby hospital.

The remaining children were taken to a foster home and on the way "the police stopped at a fast food restaurant and the eyes of the children lit up as though they had discovered another world," is how Le Midi Libre describes their journey out of hell.

The parents were immediately taken into police custody.

The father, a 50-year-old devout Moslem, reportedly told investigators that for him the condition of his children was a sign of the success of their education, and that he wanted to "purify them".

"This is a case of a family that lived outside of reality and totally cut off from the rest of society," Jean-Pierre Dreno, the public prosecutor of Perpignan told reporters.

"The father's behaviour was exactly as one would expect from someone who treated his own family as a sect," he added.

Only three of the children were sent to school, the rest had dropped out once they had reached puberty because the education authorities refused to allow them to attend wearing headscarves.

Under French law there is a ban on the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in public schools at both primary and secondary levels;

"There had been a conflict in the past between the mother and the school authorities especially about absenteeism " said Dreno.

"The only affair that we had in this department in 2003 about the wearing of the headscarves at school involved this family and theoretically the children were following lessons by correspondence," he added

The father and his 49-year-old wife have been charged with putting at risk the health and lives of their children and failing to provide them with the appropriate education and security.

They also have a ninth child who is no longer living at home.