New book shows the “hidden face” of Ingrid Betancourt
Ex-husband says the “new” Betancourt is ungrateful, selfish, and money centered
By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director
Saturday, January 30, 2010
When Ingrid Betancourt was liberated from the FARC guerrillas on July 2nd 2008, she was awaited at Bogota´s military airport by a group of government officials, a restless pack of some 200 journalists, and a small group of anxious family members.
Among them was Juan Carlos Lecompte, a publicist who had married Betancourt in 1997.
After Betancourt´s kidnapping in 2002, Lecompte became famous in France and in Colombia for his tenacious efforts to secure his wife´s liberation and his un-relentless love and loyalty.
On several occasions he hired an airplane to fly over the jungle, from which he would throw out thousands of flyers with support messages for Betancourt.
Journalists often found him at conferences and public events in favor of Colombia´s hostages, where he carried with him a life-sized picture of his kidnapped wife.
But after all of the suffering and the efforts to liberate her, Lecompte was not even greeted with a kiss or a hug.
“When she descended from the airplane” he writes in Ingrid and me: a bittersweet liberty “she just grabbed my chin and said 'hello juanqui.' I imagined everything but that… She laid her hand on my cheek but it felt like a blow to my heart.”
Ingrid and Me will be released in France on January 21st and could reach Colombia later this year.
The book describes how the relationship between husband and wife crumbled after Betancourt´s long awaited release, with Lecompte narrating well known episodes of Betancourt´s first days of liberty such as how she failed to thank him for his efforts to secure her freedom when she first addressed the international press, or how Betancourt headed to France with her children and her first husband the day after her liberation, without bothering to ask Lecompte if he wanted to come along. ?
But the publicist also reveals private details of Betancourt´s new life. “In order to live in Paris and to take Melanie and Lorenzo – her children -- on vacation, she demanded 50 thousand dollars from me” writes Lecompte.
“She ignored that during her years in captivity I had stopped working in order to campaign for her liberty and had even sold my apartment. Ingrid didn´t take that into account, she took a 10 thousand dollar check from me saying it was insufficient and asking me to borrow some more money.”
The couple got divorced early last year and Lecompte, who says he wrote the book not seeking revenge but in an effort to “turn the page” on the relationship, also writes about the painful divorce proceedings. “On January 1st 2009, she asked me for a divorce.
On the 10th of January doctors were telling me that my father who was ill, only had a week left to live. I told Ingrid ´please wait for my father to pass and then I will take care of all the papers you want me to sign´… But she did not want to wait, she was so obsessed with the divorce that my Father´s death didn´t even matter to her.
The next day, on January 11th, she sent a lawyer to the hospital. That was the day I officially stopped loving her. I no longer recognized my wife.” Ingrid Betancourt retired from politics and public life after she was freed from the FARC guerrillas and now spends her days with her children who study in Paris and New York and recovering from her six years of captivity in the Seychelles islands.
The former presidential candidate is currently working on her own memoirs and collaborating with the production of a Hollywood film about her days in captivity.
Colombia´s Pais Libre Foundation keeps records on kidnappings and provides psychological counseling to family members. It says that depression and stress lead 70% of kidnapping victims to break up with their partners after they obtain liberty.
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