In another tragic turn, the mother of anorexic French model Isabelle Caro, who died last year, committed suicide, according to her family.
Marie Caro felt “enormous guilt” and decided to take her own life earlier this month, her husband, Christian Caro, told Swiss newspaper 20 minutes.
Isabelle, 28, made international headlines after she allowed her 68-pound, skeletal frame to be used in Italian photographer Olivier Toscani’s shock campaign to warn about the dangers of anorexia.
A woman looks at a giant poster showing French model Isabelle Caro, part of a campaign against anorexia by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, in Milan, Italy. (Pellaschiar/AP)
The model’s father said reports that Isabelle died on Nov. 17 from complications from pneumonia were false. The real cause, he said, was due to negligence by the medical staff at Bichat Hospital in Paris, whom he accused of prematurely disconnecting her from life support.
Isabelle was taken to the hospital at her mother’s request after she complained of a stomach ache.
Isabelle’s father told the paper that his wife “felt guilty for having put my daughter in the Bichat Hospital. My daughter did not want to go to that hospital.”
He claimed the doctors wanted to run tests and put the model to sleep so she’d be “less disturbed.”
“They should have never done that. She died because they disconnected her from the machines. Two doctors took my wife and I separately and said, “You know, in any case, your daughter didn’t want to live.” He has since lodged a formal complaint against the hospital.
In Isabelle’s 2008 autobiography, “The Little Girl Who Didn’t Want to Get Fat,” she wrote that her mother seemed to resent her throughout her childhood.
The final straw for Isabelle’s mother was the press her daughter received after her death, particularly an interview Toscani gave describing the model as arrogant and self-promoting, according to her husband.
“I tried to keep it from her. And she couldn’t tolerate it. She already couldn’t bear the death of her daughter,” he said.
