Boy Forced to Live in Forest with Father for 5 Years Found in Germany

[thetonestarr]

sapphi_snake said:

thetonestarr said:

I'm fairly certain with this single statement you've negated every last piece of logical argument I was willing to assume you could make. You clearly misunderstand entirely what it means to "jump to conclusions". I said I'm willing to have an open mind and NOT make any assumption (though in not so many words). That means I'm NOT jumping to conclusions - I'm NOT automatically saying he was an evil man without knowing all the facts, and I'm NOT condemning him while only having a couple sentences-worth of vague description of the situation.

 

You know absolutely NOTHING about what's gone on here. There are INCREDIBLE amounts of information that we haven't been given, yet you're willing to close the book and be done with it, already having made your decision. That is arrogant, that is ignorant, and that is stupid.

In addition, how the hell do you even know they KNEW they were in Germany? As far as you know, they may have wandered in from Poland or the Czech Republic on accident while they were moving around in the forest. You don't know the situation behind what they went through. Stop being so closed-minded and arrogantly assuming you do.

I was just presenting a possible explanation (which is also the most likely if this story isn't fake).

Homeschooling is legal in the Czech Republic and Poland under restrictive conditions (i.e. the kids are supervised by a school, and need to take annual exams). I'm also not sure that there's any forest which stretches from the outskirts of Berlin to Poland or the Czech Republic. If there is one, please mention it. And thr schooling part isn't the only thing wrong with this situation.

No, you were presenting a highly biased opinion based on one possible explanation. And you're still getting stuck on the false assumption that "legal" equals "right". Just because you cross borders into another nation doesn't automatically make the way you once believed and lived suddenly morally wrong. It's now illegal, yes, but it's not necessarily wrong. Some laws exist because the situation in that certain locality is different. Did you know it's illegal to wear high-heeled shoes without a permit in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California? Does that mean that a person that enters the city wearing high-heels is suddenly a bad person? Absolutely not, and you'd be a complete fool to say so! In Carmel's case, high-heels are illegal because the town is extremely compact, extremely busy, and has uneven walkways, so people wearing high-heels would frequently turn their ankles. Making it illegal to wear them makes it easy to protect the city from being sued when someone twists their ankle.

In Germany's case, they don't feel that homeschooling is a sufficient enough method of acquiring education - not because they think it's "wrong" to homeschool your children, but because they want to be able to control the quality of education that everybody in their country receives.

There's also the chance that the family was merely visiting the country and didn't even know the education laws. Legally, ignorance is not an excuse, but morally? You can't morally fault someone for doing something they had no clue was illegal.

Finally, there are no proper forests south of Berlin that are sufficiently big enough for a man and his son to live in, either, and definitely nothing large enough that the boy wouldn't stumble across dozens of other roads, farms, and towns along the way into Berlin along a two-week long trip. So if he did make this trek, it's perfectly logical to believe they'd have come from other countries originally.

 

Anyways, the ACTUAL most logical and likely explanation is that the family was visiting, whether for only a short vacation or for a year-long job assignment, it doesn't matter. But they probably weren't permanent residents of Germany, Poland, or the Czech Republic. The father was probably there when the mother died, or else under an extreme amount of stress when she died and he received the news. If he was there, he possibly took on a head injury himself and suffered brain damage. Otherwise, the shock of the situation caused him to mentally crack, and he freaked out. Either way, he was probably extremely mentally unstable and took their child and fled into the woods.