Singer Lio, who celebrates her fifty-eighth birthday this June 17, has experienced ups and downs in her career, but also in her private life. In the 1990s, she was notably the victim of domestic violence which could have turned into a tragedy without the help of her sister, Helena Noguerra.
It is the story of a dessert, whose gluttony made a singer famous. Difficult indeed to separate Lio from his incredible first success Banana Split, which occurred when she was only 16 years old. The interpreter, who is celebrating his 58th birthday on June 17th, will have subsequently experienced ups and downs in his artistic career. After several more or less triumphant studio albums, the one whose real name is Wanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos added a string to its bow in 2007 by becoming a jury for the show The New Star on M6, then for The Voice several years later. A freedom of choice that she also applied in her private life, becoming the mother of six children, born to four different fathers. However, the life of Lio, victim of domestic violence, could have taken a dramatic turn if his sister Helena Noguerra had not come to his aid.
At the end of the 1990s, the Belgian-Portuguese interpreter had a love affair with Alexis Zad. The singer, who “looked wonderful”, changes her behavior when her partner becomes pregnant with their twins, Garance and Léa. “He started beating me more and more, more and more violently“, she said in Paris Match in 2013. Begins for the singer a descent into hell. “I was in denial, I found excuses for him: ‘It’s not his fault. He was beaten himself. He is a street child.’ It was I, on the contrary, who felt guilty: ‘I had to act badly to put him in this state.’ I was with a narcissistic pervert and I didn’t know it. Little by little, I fell into alienation and my elders witnessed all this violence “, she recounts.
“Without her, I would be dead”
“Terrorized”, Lio ends up leaving the marital home and passes “from furnished to furnished” to escape his executioner. “It was the hardest time of my life. At one point, my mother even left me her two-room apartment so that I could move in with the children, and she went to live with my sister, Helena. … “, continues the singer. But the ordeal does not end there. Her ex-boyfriend finds her, while she took refuge in a hotel. “He introduced himself to the receptionist with a newspaper where we were pictured together. ‘You can see I’m her husband. Let me go upstairs!’ he exclaimed. And the guy let him do it. ” A terrible reunion follows for the artist. “This day, when I suffered violence in front of my 3 year old daughter, was the worst of my life“, she remembers to our colleagues.
Salvation will come from her sister, Helena Noguerra, who takes charge of the situation. “Without her, without her gaze on me when I was beaten, without her phone call to SOS Battered Women, I would be dead“, concludes Lio. “She was the one who saved my life. I owe her so much!” From this dark period, the singer regrets not having known how to protect her children. “It is not a question of guilt but of responsibility. I did not know how to be responsible. I asked them for forgiveness. They forgave me, but I will never forgive myself …”, she analyzes. A heavy psychoanalysis will follow to free her from this traumatic episode. She who, a few years later, will be in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the time of the death of Marie Trintignant, victim of the blows of her companion, Bertrand Cantat.
Photo credits: Patrick Carpentier / Bestimage
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