This woman from Stockholm is being suspected of illegal detention of a 41-year-old man, his son, who is in dire condition when he was found. Currently, the man is being hospitalized.
From the apartment block in Haninge, south of Stockholm, the police and local media said that the woman is being arrested for keeping her son confined in their flat for almost three decades.
A public prosecutor in charge, Emma Olsson, said the 70-year-old woman who denies any wrongdoing was being held against suspicion of illegal detention and abuse of her own son.
The son is hospitalized to treat his physical injuries that were present when he was found, but it wasn’t specified where he got them from.
According to the local newspaper, the son was found by a relative who got curious and opened the door to their unlocked flat as the mother of the son was hospitalized at the moment.
The relative mentioned to the authorities 20 years ago that she had suspected the woman of being in total control of her son, but no official action had been taken and other family members had urged her not to cause trouble.
“But I understood he was in there and he must be afraid,” she told the newspaper.
“I pushed the door and shouted hello. It stank of urine, dirt, and dust. It smelled rotten. No one can have cleaned for many years,” she added.
She pushed her way through piles of rubbish to the kitchen, where she found the man sitting in a corner. She noticed that his legs look horrible – they were filled with bruises and sores.
The man could barely stand, missing much of his teeth, and had a slurred speech.
“He spoke very fast and a little incoherently but he was not afraid of me,” she continued. “I’m in shock, but I’m thankful he got help and will survive.”
Apparently, the woman detained has lost a child before at a young age, and once she got another son, she named it the same as her previous one and became very over-protecting of him. Aftonbladet newspaper mentioned that the son has been taken out of school when he was around 12 or 13.
“She stole his life from him and manipulated the people around her in order to keep her secret … he has been badly let down by all of society,” the unnamed relative told Aftonbladet.
An unidentified neighbor who lived in the same building told the paper they had not seen the man for years.
“They almost never went outside, and never even opened the windows for fresh air,” she said.
“The apartment was sealed,” added the neighbor.
Many neighbors found the situation strange, she said. “But what can you do? How do you know what’s going on behind closed doors?”
Source: The Guardian