Images of a young boy with extremely thin arms and bruises in northwestern Turkey after he was removed from a hoarder's house have shocked the public and exposed a tragedy.
A 9-year-old was found at death’s door when a cleaning crew was called to clean the hoarder's house in Bursa province on Sunday. The landlord had summoned the crew after seeking the eviction of the tenants, who moved in 2020, due to unpaid rent. Inside among the clutter of garbage and in a locked room, the crew discovered the boy, identified as C.M.A. The boy told police who visited the house that his mother was the tenant, later identified as K.P.A., but a further investigation revealed that his biological mother was K.P.A.’s sister Y.A.
Soon, it came to light that Y.A. had filed a complaint against K.P.A. stating that she had kidnapped her son from their mother’s funeral on March 5, 2020, and was unable to locate the boy or her sister.
K.P.A. was taken into custody for endangering the little boy’s life.
The Sabah newspaper reported that K.P.A. and her 16-year-old daughter E.Z.A. had criminal records for kidnapping and an assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Even though K.P.A. used her right to remain silent at the police station, she provided testimony at the prosecutor's office, saying that her sister did not want to take care of the child.
"I am working as a security guard and I am divorced with a kid. My nephew was staying with his grandma. After she died, I tried to contact my sister who lives in another city. However, she did not want the kid," said K.P.A. "That is the reason I took him in. Since his mother does not want him, I have been attending to him. I have been trying to contact my sister to take him back," she added.
The boy was placed in the care of a child welfare agency and received treatment. At first, the boy was reunited with his biological mother living in the southern province of Antalya, but he was later relocated to a social care home when it was found out that his biological mother was currently unfit for his care. Authorities will now decide whether the mother will be handed the child’s custody, with the Ministry of Family and Social Services providing her economic support to take care of her son.
For the time being, E.Z.A. has been placed under the protection of Bursa Family and Social Services Provincial Directorate teams.
The Nilüfer Municipality Cleaning crew also talked about the gut-wrenching incident.
"When we found him, he was sickly thin and in an unattended condition," Fırat Yaşar, one of the cleaners who found C.M.A., told Anadolu Agency (AA).
"We were shocked to see him. After the initial shock, we told him that we came to save him. However, he was terrified. I guess he was also in shock. It looked like he had lost consciousness. When the kid told us: 'I do not want to talk to strangers,' we were surprised," said Tuncay Gürel, another cleaner said.