Dutch kids kept secluded by parents in Spain for years

A woman with a Dutch father says that she and her younger brother were locked up in their home in Spain by their parents for years, the Spanis newspaper El Punt Avui reported.

The now 24-year-old escaped from the home in Arbucies, in northeastern Spain, on February 24. She knocked on the neighbors’ door and told them that she and her 18-year-old brother lived cut off from the outside world, had never been to school, didn’t have a television, and that the neighbors were the first non-relatives they spoke to.

The neighbor called the police, who checked the woman’s parental home. There, the 58-year-old Dutch father said that his daughter had psychiatric problems and was being treated by her uncle, who is a therapist. The family lived with the mother's two brothers in Matadepera, near Barcelona, until last summer. The father said they moved to a remote home in Arbucies because the mother is sensitive to radiation and cannot live near antennas.

During the police investigation, the parents allegedly refused to make a statement, and in a court case, they said through a lawyer that homeschooling is allowed in the Netherlands. The judge ruled that because the children were now adults and did not want to file a case against their parents, they could not be placed out of the home. However, the court ordered the parents to give their children more freedom, the newspaper wrote.