we don't know if any of that is true, he may did have food and roof over his head.(for a while) . now, the memory loss might tell us something, but living in wilderness isnt bad (look at tarzan) except here, of course, thd kid needed to go to school

An adventure? I'd like to see you spending 5 years in a forest, with no clothes, sanitary units, access to healthcare, food (other than you may be able to catch or get from trees), education or contact with other human beings. Society won't ruin him. The ordeal he's been through already ruined him. And not just psychologically. He'll have to start the 5th or 6th grade again, and he's 17! Due to his isolation, he's probably still got the intellect of 12-year-old. His chance of having a good future are basically ruined.

And EVERY CHILD deserves the essentials (food, clothes, a roof over their head, education). That fact that you'd even think otherwise makes me sick to my stomach. People who aren't capable (or willing) to provide that to a child, shouldn't be having children in the first place.

And can you please tell me what 'social skills' this kid got from living in the forest with  no contact with other humans other than his father? You can't really gain any social skills unless you interact with other people. Or what important life skills did he gained from living like a wild animal? He'll probably never be able to adjust to living in society. 

You seem to have no ideea what you're talking about.

There's no indication that he had any roof over his head. It's also  pretty clear that they were isolated from society. And Tarzan, seriously? I am just gonna pretend that was an attmept to make a joke, since tarzan would've actually died when he was a baby in the real world. It's not just the school part that was a problem. Not by a long shot.

After reading more about this, I'm getting a strong feeling that at least parts of the boy's story are made up.

- While his tent and his sleeping bag indeed showed signs of camping outdoors, his clothes and fingernails were clean and the boy's overall appearance was well-groomed and well-fed. Quite extraordinary for someone living in the forest for the last five years.
- The boy says he neither remembers his last name, not even the country he came from (he speaks English fluently but hardly any word of german) nor anything else that happened more than five years ago. Yet he remembers his date of birth, his and his mother's first name and the fact that she died five years ago in a car accident.
So according to his story, he lived a rather normal life until the age of 12, but he remembers absolutely nothing about that time yet he perfectly remembers everything since?

Of course I'm not an expert on amnesia, there are probably some really strange cases - but I'm nevertheless sceptic about this story - as are the policemen in Berlin where he turned up. Remember the "piano man" who had a somewhat similar amesia story that turned out to be fake.
And as far as I know, most "real" amnesia people provide a rather confused impression, while this boy doesn't.

The other possibility I see is that maybe his father had a criminal past and was therefor hiding. Since his mother's death, having amnesia and living in the forest all happened pretty much at the same time (five years ago), it seems very plausible that all three incidents are connected. Maybe the father actually killed the mother and then started hiding from the police in the forest. In this case, his seemingly absent memory might be real but rather denial than amnesia.

I... don't see where he was forced to do anything. Misleading title.

If you just mean living in the woods is child abuse.... I guess the aborigines should just be all thrown in jail then.

Holy crap there are a lot of assumptions in this post.

I mean, you know that in the wildreness people can find food, make clothes, and live sanitary lives right? 

Also... they lived in a tent.  It's in the article.

Why wouldn't he remember anything? It's not like 5 years in the wood makes you forget who you are.

Here's what I think...IF the kid has indeed been living in the forest for 5 years with his father, I believe the teenager is responsible for his father's death, i.e. he killed him.

Like a poster above said, there are incongruencies in his story. Despite what he says, I think he does remember some of his prior life. After 5 years he must have had enough with his lifestyle and his crazy father (to go live isolated from society in the woods is crazy by definition...though it doesn't really matter by then because crazy is relative to society). He must have wanted to go back to the modern world and experience all that he had been separated from.

His father obviously disagreed. They must have gotten into a fight, but the boy wasn't so small anymore. He ended up killing his father, I want to say in an almost "accidental" way during the fight. After realizing what he had done, he must have panicked for a few hours. Then, once calm, he grabbed his father's compass and threw him off a hill so it would appear he "fell in the woods". Then he journed back to society.

Anyway, that's what I think.

He was taken out of school. He was isolated from society. He was isolated from medical care. They didn't have a stable food supply. How would you say a social worker would evaluate this situation? Do you think it's an approrpiate environment to raise a child?

And your the problem with your aborigine example is that those people actually have a culture and society structure that is simply different from our own. They're allowed to live that way, because it's not right or appropriate to force our culture on them. This however is just a crazy guy who dragged his 12-year-old son to a forest and made him live there for 5 years. And according to our society's standards, what he did is called child abuse, and if he weren't dead, he shouls be rotting in jail about now.

This is an interesting possibility you've brought up here.