Hagen: Mother locks up a neglected five-year-old – he climbs onto the roof of the house

hagen
His childhood room was a prison: a neglected five-year-old climbs onto the roof of the house

The police in Hagen had to save a five-year-old boy from a house roof. He had climbed there from his childhood room – because his mother had apparently locked him there for a long time under terrible circumstances.

A home should give a child love and security, but for a boy from Hagen it became a prison. Neighbors had alerted the police after seeing the five-year-old climb onto the roof of the four-story house and crouch on the gutter. The officials brought the child to safety and checked the apartment – there they saw a frightening picture.

According to the police, the 22-year-old mother first had to unlock the children’s room. The boy had been locked in there and had made his way through a window onto the roof. The room was like a prison cell where the child must have had a horrible time: there was only a mattress and a bowl of feces. The youth welfare office was called in immediately.

Hagen: Youth Welfare Office takes care of the child

“We cannot say how long the child was locked in the room,” said a police spokesman for the “Westfalenpost”. In the meantime, the youth welfare office has taken the child into care, and the mother has been charged with violating the duty of care and deprivation of liberty. But she is still at large.

The child’s mother has been living with the boy and her husband, who is not the child’s father, in the North Rhine-Westphalian city since the end of 2021. A city spokeswoman told the “Westfalenpost” that she was supported on an outpatient basis by the youth welfare office until the autumn of last year. After that, “the situation in the family and the living situation were satisfactory”. Apparently a misjudgment, as it turned out now.

However, the woman’s husband has denied the allegations. “We had both misplaced the keys to the apartment, the cats probably played with them. We both work in shifts and were bleary-eyed. Because we didn’t want the boy to leave the apartment, we locked him in his children’s room. That was a mistake,” said he the “Westfalenpost”. He explained the container with feces in the children’s room by saying that the boy was “not dry”.

Sources: “Westphalia Post” / RTL / “Picture”

Watch the video: Alex is one of three million children in Germany growing up in poverty. In the video he shows what that means for him and his family in everyday life. His mother, who is currently receiving Hartz IV, then explains her precarious situation in a talk on “stern TV am Sonntag”.