German man 'imprisoned by parents for 30 years'

Neighbours raised alarm after hearing 43-year-old moaning at house in Freienfels, Bavaria

A 43-year-old German man has been rescued from a house in Bavaria after apparently having been held in isolation by his parents for the past three decades.

German prosecutors are investigating the man’s parents on charges ranging from assault to neglect and false imprisonment.

“We still don’t know exactly for how long the man has had no contact with the outside world and … whether or not he was allowed to leave the property at all,” a police spokesman told German media. “But we can say he was held in isolation.”

The man is said to have been in an unkempt state, with ingrown toenails and smeared in his own excrement, but was not undernourished.

Neighbours in Freienfels, northern Bavaria, raised the alarm after reportedly hearing the man moaning. Police raided the home and found the man, whom they took to a regional hospital where he is being treated. Doctors there said they believed he had learning disabilities.

Police said the man had been to primary school and had started secondary education, but at about the age of 13 experts had declared him unfit for school.

His mother told the local newpaper Nordbayerische Kurier that her son had “had enough of life” having been teased at school. “He wanted to stay with us. If I were to tell you what we went through, you wouldn’t believe me. All I ever wanted to do was protect him,” she said.

She described the police raid on the family home as an “ambush”.

In a similar case in April, police in Rosenheim, Bavaria, freed a 26-year-old woman who had been allegedly held in a room in a flat by her mother for years. The mother jumped out of a window of the second-floor flat when the police entered and was badly injured.