Overview

• The court on July 1 ruled that a nine-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister were deprived of adequate care and ordered their removal from parental custody.
• Officers discovered the siblings in April during a flood evacuation on a remote Lauriano farm, where they remained in nappies and spoke only a private primitive language.
• Investigations revealed the children, born in Germany, had never been registered with health or educational services and lived in squalid conditions of broken furniture and rubbish.
• Their 54-year-old Dutch father has defended the isolation as a safeguard against infections and plans to appeal the court’s decision.
• The incident has highlighted pandemic-era confinement fears and exposed gaps in monitoring off-grid families by social and judicial authorities.