I can't find a thread for the unknown living. Please move if there is a better place:
He got his name from the Bible, he communicates like a one-year-old child. Who is the mystery man from Motol?
CZECH REPUBLIC
May 19, 2023 11:54 AM
It's a case unprecedented in the Czech Republic. A man whose identity no one has yet been able to discover has been on life support in Prague's Motol Hospital for almost seven years. Neither the authorities nor the police. He does not speak, it is not known whether he understands Czech. The mystery was brought to light earlier this week by a Supreme Court verdict that ordered the hospital to give the man a new identity and name. The editors of iDNES.cz investigated the details and what the hospital plans to do next.
"This is the only such case so far. However, it is likely that a similar situation could occur again in the future," Motol Hospital spokesperson Pavlína Danková begins her description of the case of the mysterious man whose identity no one has been able to find for seven years.
It all started on 2 July 2016. The man was brought to Motol in a serious condition. He needed urgent care "due to a disturbance of consciousness or a fall from a height," the verdict reads. Doctors took care of him, but subsequently ran into a fairly common problem. He didn't have his papers with him, so no one knew who he was.
The hospital therefore referred the case to the police. The CSIs tried everything: fingerprints, DNA samples, photos. They also tried to make an identification at Motol. "The hospital repeatedly contacted the Police of the Czech Republic, the Ministry of the Interior, persons with knowledge of homeless people moving around Prague," says Danková.
None of the patient's friends or relatives came forward and the patient's name could not be found. Police closed the case, saying the identity remains unknown.
Without identity and excluded from social ties
The hospital was therefore hesitant about what to do with the man. His diagnosis was serious. "The quality of interaction is consistent with an age of one year at most, with complete absence of speech," was the description of his condition. Doctors do not expect improvement, but the man may survive on the machines for another 40 years.
"According to the chief medical officer's statement, despite the diagnosis that the unknown man has, he is fit to be on the machines for the next 30 or 40 years and it is impossible to tell from his speech whether or not he understands Czech," the court also wrote.
The problem is that without an identity, the patient finds himself completely outside any legal standards. And all the costs of treatment must be paid by the hospital.
"Without a name, surname, date of birth, any administrative authority will refuse to conduct further administrative proceedings. But even by other entities, in principle, no legal action can be taken against a person without an identity. The person in turn is not able to take any legal action against those around him. De facto, he or she is outside social, or at least a significant part of legal relations, which, in the hospital's opinion, is contrary to the public interest," explains Danková.
Motol has therefore decided to temporarily assign the man a new identity. The hospital itself was to be his guardian, but not in the sense of limiting the patient's legal capacity. In the words of a spokeswoman, Motol chose "the path that interferes as little as possible with the rights of the person concerned".
The patient was also given a new name: Adam Letenský. "The first name Adam - according to the biblical story, which is part of the cultural and social milieu of the Czech Republic, Adam is the mythical first man - and the surname in the format of an adjective derived from the place where the person concerned was found," Danková writes. Again, she said, the hospital wanted to "respect the person of the person concerned as much as possible"
Hole in the system
But then the legal tug-of-war began. In 2019, the District Court for Prague 5 ruled that the assignment of a new identity was illegal. The decision was upheld this week by the Supreme Court. The reason? The man already has one identity, just no one knows it. And that identity needs to be preserved and protected, not replaced, the court said in its ruling, citing the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
If it is not objectively possible to identify the person, then such a situation - given the outcome of the court proceedings in question - has no solution," writes Pavlína Danková, spokesperson for the Motol University Hospital.
Coincidentally, on 2 July 2016, Prague paramedics registered a second unknown man alongside the patient from Motol, according to spokeswoman Pavlína Kanclířová. "On the day in question, Prague paramedics dealt with several cases where the patient was listed as 'unknown'," Kanclířová said. However, she did not specify whether the identity of the man had been revealed.
Source:
https://www.lidovky.cz/domov/fn-mot...-neznama-identita.A230519_115456_ln_domov_atv
