Dutch family 'waiting for end of time' discovered in basement
bbc.com
bbc.com
Don't be too surprised if in one or two days it'll turn out that this family wasn't as hidden or "off grid" as is being suggested, but that the organisations which are responsible from preventing this from happening were partly aware but poorly communicating with each other... so no-one actually took any action.
The kids, if they actually went 'underground' 9 years ago would have been in the mandatory schooling age. Checks on this tend to be quite stringent and home schooling needs to be approved by the (I think) local authorities.
The Netherlands is quite densely populated and there is just no way if they weren't outside that they didn't notice any civilization existing. Airplanes, fireworks, things like that would have existed.
Then the fact that the home owner never once visited their renters in 9 years or apparently they didn't have to do taxes.
Aside from all that, I'm very amused by the fact that this 25 year old person went to a bar, was turned away, then the next time ordered 5 beers and got to talking with the bar owner and they were confused so they alerted the police. Imagine the confusion on the person that thought the world ended and ended up at a bar with people drinking beers!
Oh and the plot twists, the oldest person first being thought to be the father not actually being the father! And then being arrested for interfering in the investigation.
This is just so weird, how could 5 kids ages 16-25 (or 7-17 when it started) be kept inside for that long???
The article never says they thought civilization didn't exist. They were waiting for civilization to end, they didn't think it already ended.
But there is still a huge amount of speculation going on, the whole story could be completely different in a few days.
Re-reading the link it says that 'some' of the people were registered.
https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/6004310/gezin-uit-ruinerwold-ko...
This is uncommon in the Netherlands, I know there are communities in the US with small communities that don't want anything to do with the government. Those people don't even have birth certificates or social security number. But I've never heard anything like that in the Netherlands.
Here in the US that means "lawyering up instead of being dumb and running his mouth", not sure if it's the same over there. If he was really not cooperative the police would be more than happy to say exactly what (they say) he did.
They must be really good at hiding themselves. /s
* The man wasn't cooperating with a police investigation as to whether or not people are being held there against their will (at least one person - the escaped 25 year old 'boy' - said he had been).
* While the children are now adults, it appears as if they never went to school (illegal in NL, with some homeschooling exceptions, but this must be formerly arranged).
* It appears as if (at least some of) the kids were also never registered. This is also illegal in NL.
* The above two facts are probably considered to be child abuse and may be part of a larger pattern of abuse now that they are adults.
I'm more curious about how they paid rent for a decade, without contact with the outside world (e.g. a job-->salary). And how did this man pay for his five beers?
There's an interesting story here, but to my American mind I don't see evidence of a crime unless some were being held against their will.
I'm assuming he didn't pay for his beers. In small pubs you only pay your bill when you leave. Not that he'd know.
There’s probably also a case of negligence to be made. Keeping children in basements for a long time is likely to impede their development.
Do they require that you educate your child via the state or (not so) equivalent home-schooling?
That's the theory, anyway. How it was possible that these children were never checked on is still under investigation.
Its an annoying needle to thread
article in Dutch: https://www.rtvdrenthe.nl/nieuws/153066/Eigenaresse-boerderi...
The papers are reporting that some of the children were not registered, but it's still crazy.
I'd speculate that this happened because the mother died young and the father basically lost it and was enabled by the renter.
Registered how? It's pretty obvious that these people were living off grid and didn't want to be registered with anyone in any way, and that (in and of itself) shouldn't be illegal.
Or are you suggesting it is okay to have children and never educate at all?
There also is a fundamental reason to trust the state over a child's parents: the state has considerably more transparency and oversight over its actions than the parents do.
Most people don't want to harm children and won't sit by when they see it happening. They want to help. That means it's better to get more people involved in the lives of children. "The state" is one way we codify that.
I think there's a good argument for enabling communities to assume that role rather than central government, but some group should be there to protect children from neglect.
In Germany, I have to tell the state where I live and every time I move, I have to tell them again. I can't open a bank account, get health insurance, rent a proper place, I can't do anything, till the local council can be bothered staffing the registration office enough to see me. I certainly live at a certain place, but it's as if I'm staying at that address on holiday.
In Australia, I don't have to register with the state. If I move house, I have enough things on my mind. If a person is born, died, gets married or (sometimes) changes their name in Australia, someone has to report that fact to the government. But a person is a person, or dead, or married, or has a different name while they're waiting for the bureaucracy to do its thing.
In both cases, children have to go to school. Even in the absence of any registration or reporting, there's still an obligation. So what does the registration actually achieve?
The government has the power and ability to find out where a person lives. Why compel me to do something you can make obnoxiously difficult? - and which serves no apparent purpose?
This is the real child abuse here.
Like what? Because most states have had registration of births for about a century.
Taxation is not theft. You either work in the country and make money, and use everything around you in that country that was provided by taxes (roads, sewer, fire, police, etc) or you don't work and don't pay taxes.
That would be a hazard for your neighbours though. Like it or not, living in a society also means you have duties towards your fellow citizens.
For one thing, the United States has a 30% expatriation tax. They will take 30% of your wealth just for leaving.
Your stuff (which was partially acquired via exploitation of the ecosystem that is the country that wants those taxes... Bet you drove on a public road) isn't.
Now all hail his highness, the holy Herman Hollerith!
Also, possible military service maybe?
But the GP poster is 100% correct that purposely not registering your children with the state in this day and age is hugely suspicious. You are giving up so many services and getting very little apparent benefit in return, there has to be some ulterior motive. It's not a good place to be where the least terrible answer is that you're a bit crazy in the head.
- Naaktgeboren, "born-naked"
- Van 't Zelfde, "same to you"
- De Naamloze, "nameless"
- Bij 't Werk, "on the job"You'll find hardly anyone in the UK, except maybe extremists like Rees Mogg, who would object to registration of birth. Generally speaking, we quite like our government institutions and services. It's conservative politicians who are wedded to turning us into the 51st state. Even conservative voters often object to closure of services or attempts to to use a popular slogan and outright lie: "introduce the efficiency of the market" to the NHS.
There is no requirement for adults to register their whereabouts with the authorities.
And home schooling is explicitly legal, the authorities may or may not check on children who are home schooled.
In many western European countries these things would be radical. Both US and UK share a strong tradition of individual independence.
The Education Act simply requires full time education without explicit mention of home. Home schooling in Europe isn't exactly rare, though I know many do rule it out - perhaps around half - Germany for instance. Perfectly OK in France, Italy, Belgium and plenty of others.
You seem to be making a distinction without a difference.
Up until 1979 they were a mostly traditionalist and small c conservative party. Since then they have been steadily getting more radical and extreme.
How do you enfranchise people who have no paperwork, no id, who you don't know exist.
How do you decide whether to give someone a pension, if you don't know how old they are.
As for voting, I think it's the better plan to give everyone the vote unless you can prove they're tourists. In NZ, permanent residents get the right to vote, so it's not such a stretch. The person is, after all, subject to the laws. (Rights should be afforded to subjects, as a rule, not citizens. The change of language in the 20th century was probably not a good thing. Roman citizenship law is not actually something to emulate.) Prove they're deportable and deport them, or let them vote.
I used to live in a house the government didn't really know existed. (I think the state government was happy to believe me, but the federal government and local council struggled.) Someone would come over, verify that it was indeed a residence, and move on. This lasted a few years until I think they were all happy to acknowledge it. I think it's at least that easy to prove a person exists. (I was the first local citizen to live there in many years; the rest were generally international students.)
Has the world changed so much that this is weird now? Weed is still illegal in 90% of the entire world.
Blackberries are a national pest, and yet sell for $80/kg in supermarkets. The average person could collect over $50 worth from the side of the road in under an hour.
Australia is not known for its efficiency nor logic.
Hell, as a 10 year veteran remote software developer it some days I feel like I'm already there. One time I spent a year where I didn't say anything out loud to anyone. I got a cat and switched jobs and now I make sure to have more pointless conversations when I get the opportunity with coworkers so I don't go full hermit accidentally.
How did you get food?
I'm married nowadays, but my mental health used to suffer after a long weekend when there was usually a day or two when I didn't speak to anyone. Before that, when I was living overseas and had ptsd and depression, I think I would go a week without meaningful conversation (on occasion two weeks, if a certain event was cancelled), but I would buy food or something most days that would at least involve a half comprehended exchange "(hi) hi (some amount of money please) thanks (receipt?) no thanks (nice day)". These were at least useful since my tone of voice varied - sometimes I sounded happier.
Do you cope a lot better through that than me, or was your mental health in decline at the time?
> How did you get food?
Not the parent, but this isn't hard: self-checkouts are common these days, and even if you take food deliveries, you don't pay the delivery person directly, you pay through the app.
New reports[0] are saying the father used to be a member of the Unification Church:
>Local television station RTV Drenthe earlier said the Austrian man, identified only as Josef B, the father and the captive family were all part of South Korea’s controversial Unification Church, dubbed “Moonies” after their late founder Sun Myung Moon.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/dutch-police-a...
A common "meme" is to claim Drenthe doesn't exist.
I love how in The Netherlands the "middle of nowhere" is a 90 minute drive from the capital :)
Lol. The capital is in the middle of nowhere, that's why. You need to drive a few hours northeast of the capital to get to somewhere (i.e. Sydney).
The farm looks nice and abundant though, I'd love to live self-sufficiently à la Rob Greenfield, aside from my main remote job
"Plausible" in the context of TFA, of course, if we're gonna go ahead and believe it, for the sake of argument.
I mean, there's not a lot of information to go off, either. The article adds zero additional information (relevant information, I don't care how many beers he drank) over the first paragraph, so all we know is contained in that one sentence. Since the family seems to have been liberated, it would have been interesting to know what actually happened there and how they were convinced not to leave the farm. Shouldn't have been to hard to ask, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
Unfortunately the math no longer works out but those crazies love clean decade numbers like 2010, so I'm sticking by it.
Man has got his priorities straight.
The article doesn't detail anything other than they lived "underground". A child moving into the basement of their house lives "underground". You can design homes that go underground.
Furthermore, the 25-year-old went to the pub, not to the police or anywhere. If he was being held against his will, I doubt the pubs the first place you go.
The 25 year old was amazed at the sight of a pub and told them that daylight was very bad for him, that he was only able to get out that night and that he couldn't go back anymore. Apparently he was astonished that there were still any other people in the world.
I think the idea of going to the police was completely alien to him.
It's now been reported[0] that the father was an ex-member of the Unification Church[1]:
>Local television station RTV Drenthe earlier said the Austrian man, identified only as Josef B, the father and the captive family were all part of South Korea’s controversial Unification Church, dubbed “Moonies” after their late founder Sun Myung Moon.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/dutch-police-a...
> "Officers visited the remote farmhouse and carried out a search. They discovered a hidden staircase behind a cupboard in the living room that led down to a basement room where the family were housed."
My parents have a fully furnished basement. That's not weird. Even having a bedroom in a basement is slightly weird but not terribly so. But when you throw in the context of the hidden staircase it all becomes much much weirder.
I dunno - 9 years without a beer and I might have different priorities...