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Dutch Family Discovered In Cellar After Spending Years ‘Waiting For End Of Time’

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Nemo

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Dutch family 'waiting for end of time' discovered in basement.

A family who spent nine years in a basement "waiting for the end of time" have been discovered by police in the Netherlands after one of them turned up at a local pub, reports say.
A man of 58 and a family with young adults aged 18 to 25 were living at a farm in the province of Drenthe.
They were found after the eldest of the children ordered beer at a bar in the nearby village of Ruinerwold.

He then told staff he needed help, broadcaster RTV Drenthe reported
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(C)BBC. '19


(dunno if this is the right place for this story.)
 
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/du...after-spending-years-waiting-for-end-of-time/

Local news station RTV Drenthe, which first reported the story, said the family “have been living in a basement for years, waiting for the ‘end of time’.”
Some of those freed “had no idea that other people existed,” the station added.


Police were alerted after a man of around 25, believed to be the family’s oldest son, walked into a village bar on Sunday evening.
The dishevelled man, unwashed and wearing old clothes said “he has not been ‘outside’ for the past nine years,” bar owner Chris Westerbeek told RTV Drenthe.
“He said he’d never been to school and seemed very confused. He spoke in a childish way,” said Westerbeek.


The man told Westerbeek he ran away from home and urgently needed help, “so I phoned the police.”
Upon investigation police discovered a hidden staircase behind a cupboard leading to a cellar where a man said to be the family’s father and five others, believed to be his children, were hiding.
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There are two threads on this story, can they be merged?
 
Some more details

They were found in a secret room which could be locked, not a cellar.

A 58-year-old man who was renting the farm but was not the father of the children has been arrested, police confirmed, but they would not reveal his identity. Dutch media identified him as Joseph B, an Austrian odd-job man who had a small workshop on an industrial estate in the nearby town of Meppel.

The Austrian foreign ministry has confirmed an Austrian citizen from Vienna was being held in relation to the case, but said he did not want contact with officials. The ministry did not know the grounds for his arrest, it said.

One neighbour told the Telegraaf newspaper that the man, who was seen daily driving an old Volvo car, was “very sharp … You only needed to go near the place and he’d send you packing. He watched everything through binoculars”.

Dutch media said the oldest of the children, a 25-year-old named only as Jan, had a Facebook account and began posting updates in June for the first time in nine years. “Started a new job at Creconat,”

The firm, affiliated to another company in Meppel, was raided by police on Monday and belonged to the Austrian man, the paper said.

The group was discovered after Jan visited a local bar, the Kastelein cafe. On the first occasion, 10 days ago, he “ordered and drank five beers on his own”, the owner, Chris Westerbeek, told the local broadcaster RTV Drenthe.

When the man reappeared last Sunday, he “looked confused”, Westerbeek said. “He was unkempt, with long tangled hair. We got talking. He said he had run away and needed urgent help, and that he had never been to school. Then we called the police.”

police had found a hidden staircase leading to the family’s hiding place behind a cupboard in the living room. The father was bedridden having suffered a stroke some years ago, it said.
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It's all a bit confusing. The 'father' was bedridden after a stroke but the house was seemingly rented by someone else 'The Austrian'.
 
Home schooling gone weird? End-Of-Times cult? Something more sinister?
 
Sounds like the set up to 'Kimmy Schmidt' to me.

On a more serious note, it sounds like a small cult. Remember the Maoist cult run by 'comrade bala' in South London?
 
Is it proved to be real yet? rather than a hoax or trying to get people in trouble?
 
During the Trump Impeachment, and The British Thing That Cannot Be Named Here?
 
They're dutch, I'd say they're more worried about rising sea levels.
 
The police have begun to talk in terms of "held against their will" and there possibly being some sort of cult / religious connection ...

Dutch police investigating a family that may have lived isolated on a farm for a decade said Thursday it's possible they were held there against their will -- and they're looking at whether "certain religion or philosophy" might have been involved.
National police arrested a second person in the case Thursday. Both men are charged with "unlawful deprivation of liberty," police said in a news release ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/europe/netherlands-family-isolation-investigation-trnd/index.html
 
Certainly is an odd case...
 
Dutch farm mystery: Father held as police unpick secret farm 'sect'

The 67-year-old father of a family found living in a secret room on an isolated Dutch farm has been arrested.
His arrest came hours after an Austrian man who rented the property was remanded in custody.
Six grown-up children apparently spent the past nine years in seclusion on the farm, near the village of Ruinerwold.
Reports suggest the two arrested men may have formed their own sect, and police said they believed the children were held against their will.
Police confirmed that the six children, aged 18-25, included four women and two men and that their father had suffered a stroke
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(C) BBC. '19
 
Any more news? I can't find anything after the initial reports two weeks ago...
 
Since you asked, and since it makes the story even more weird ... It seems the family group (or at least the father) wasn't as completely isolated from the wider world as first suggested ...
Dutch father in Ruinerwold case went by ‘John Eagles’ online

The man accused of locking away his six adult children in a remote farmhouse for nine years made a series of bizarre posts online.

The father of six children who were allegedly locked away at a remote Dutch farmhouse posted photos bizarre photos of himself working out as his children were locked up.

Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, 67, was arrested and charged last week with unlawful deprivation of liberty, as well as abuse and money laundering, after his eldest son, Jan Zon van Dorsten, escaped the farm in Ruinerwold and raised the alarm.

When police arrived at the property they found Gerrit-Jan and his children, aged between 18 and 25, hidden in a small room inside the house.

In a statement, officers said the family may have lived in the house with each other, separated from society, since 2010.

However Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant has since linked Gerrit-Jan with a Facebook page and online blog where he appeared to interact with followers and post photos, videos and articles under the name John Eagles.

On these sites, ‘Eagles’ promoted everything from his daily exercise routine to gardening tips and religious theories. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.news.com.au/world/europ...e/news-story/5ba3fa518b1ed7e5b9bc3f6a3f37d440
 
And here's a description (posted today) of the farm, the living conditions, and the two older men implicated as controlling whatever was going on there ...
Inside the remote Dutch farm of Doomsday family kept captive for nine years

Eerie photos have emerged from inside the remote Dutch farmhouse where five children were reportedly kept captive for nine years “waiting for the end of time”.

The story keeps changing about whether the five people aged 18 to 25 were a Doomsday cult or just children locked in a secret dungeon by their deranged, apocalyptic father.

But images taken of the isolated property reveal bars on the window of a tiny room, squalid sanitary arrangements, and letters and numbers scribbled on boards and walls. ...

The farm is accessible only by a bridge over a canal outside the village of Ruinerwold in the Dutch province of Drenthe, 140km northeast of Amsterdam.

Part hidden by a row of trees, it has a vegetable plot and a goat, although neighbours reportedly only saw one man outside the dilapidated dwelling.

He was believed to be Josef “the Austrian”, since identified as Josef Brunner, a 57-year-old carpenter who had left his family to join a sect and was the farm’s tenant.
Neighbours described him as a “sharp” character who was very protective of his home.

Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, 67, is the father of the five young adults found living locked inside the house.

A former member of the Moonies cult, from which he split 30 years ago, he is believed to have been creating an ecological utopia as he awaited the world’s end. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.news.com.au/world/europ...s/news-story/dfc86b883a6d4e79916853496a23ef2b
 
Here's an update on this strange case ...
Father in Dutch farm family case charged with sexual abuse: prosecutors

Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday they suspected the father of a family that was found locked away in a farmhouse room of having sexually abused two of his nine children. ...

The 67-year-old father was detained at the time on charges of abuse, unlawful detention and money laundering.

In addition to the five children found at the farm and the one who escaped, the man had three other children who did not live at the farm. Prosecutors said on Thursday they now also suspected the father of having sexually abused two of those siblings.

DNA tests had shown that the children who lived at the farm, estimated to be in the ages of 18 to 25, all had the same parents and that the detained man was indeed their father, prosecutors said.

The children were never registered at birth and had never gone to school, both of which are required by law in the Netherlands.

A 58-year-old man who paid the rent on the farmhouse was taken into custody on similar charges as the father when the family was found.

Both men remain in custody and are expected to appear in court in January.
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SOURCE: https://news.yahoo.com/father-dutch-farm-family-case-120827455.html
 
Here's the latest news regarding the case.

A Dutch father accused of keeping six of his children captive in an isolated farmhouse beat them in order to ward off "bad spirits", a court has heard.

Gerrit-Jan Van Dorsten, 67, is charged with unlawful detention, child abuse, sexual abuse and money laundering. He did not attend the pre-trial hearing in Assen because of ill health.

Prosecutors told the hearing that one child was tied up by his hands and feet as punishment, while another was forced to spend an entire summer in a doghouse when he was 12 years old.

"The children all speak of very serious physical punishment if their father thought there was a 'bad spirit' in them," they said. "That happened from a very young age, four or five years."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51194649
 
ramonmercado said:
Here's the latest news regarding the case.

A Dutch father accused of keeping six of his children captive in an isolated farmhouse beat them in order to ward off "bad spirits", a court has heard.

Gerrit-Jan Van Dorsten, 67, is charged with unlawful detention, child abuse, sexual abuse and money laundering. He did not attend the pre-trial hearing in Assen because of ill health.

Prosecutors told the hearing that one child was tied up by his hands and feet as punishment, while another was forced to spend an entire summer in a doghouse when he was 12 years old.

"The children all speak of very serious physical punishment if their father thought there was a 'bad spirit' in them," they said. "That happened from a very young age, four or five years."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51194649
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Update.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands have dropped a case against a father suspected of keeping his children in isolation for almost a decade.

They said that Gerrit-Jan Van Dorsten, 68, would be too ill to follow the trial proceedings. He was charged with unlawful detention, child abuse, sexual abuse of two of the children, and money laundering in January last year. His eldest child, then 25, had escaped in October 2019 and raised the alarm.

Mr Van Dorsten suffered a stroke in 2016 which left him with a string of health problems, including vision and memory loss.

Prosecutors told a court hearing on Thursday: "It is impossible that the suspect will be able to follow the criminal proceedings and participate. This goes to the heart of a fair trial" and would violate the European Convention on Human Rights, their statement added.

The court is expected to make a final decision on whether to throw out the case on 4 March, local media reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56115592
 
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