Released, after their pleas to the prosecutor, were the parents of the 29-year-old girl, who was forced to live in makeshift wooden cages, as, as they claimed, she suffers from a serious psychosomatic disease, making her aggressive and dangerous to the rest of the family members.
The prosecutor ordered a preliminary investigation into the case, while the 29-year-old was transferred to the Kalamata hospital for examinations, where she will remain until a suitable institution is found to accommodate her.
The 29-year-old’s mother told protothema.gr that for her own sake she had been locked up in the makeshift wooden cages, as the doctors could never help her, even though they had been asking for help for years.
According to information from the Hellenic Police, the case began to unfold on July 14, 2022, when a prosecutor’s order arrived at the Kalamata police station for a preliminary examination regarding the investigation of the offences of illegal detention and exposure against the 29-year-old woman who, as noted in the relevant documents, has been diagnosed with moderate mental retardation with set behaviours.
The relevant order was made on the basis of an official note of the Social Service of the General Hospital of Kalamata, which carried out on 25 May 2022 an autopsy in cooperation with the Help at Home program of the Municipality of Kalamata, and had found that the above disabled person was living in a room where instead of a door, wooden bars with a padlock had been installed.
The existence of the partitions was justified by the foster parents as the only means to prevent the girl’s aggressive behaviour and to prevent the risk of self-harm.
On July 14, 2022, police officers of the Kalamata Police Station visited the family’s house where they found the existence of the wooden structure in the room with the parents claiming that the reason for its existence is to protect the 29-year-old girl from seizures she suffers.
Further after an affidavit of a psychiatrist of the General Hospital of Kalamata, it emerged that the girl had been examined three times in 2022 and had been diagnosed with undefined organic psychosis and moderate mental retardation unable to self-help and understand things, while she did not need voluntary or involuntary hospitalisation in a psychiatric clinic.
What the 29-year-old’s mother said:
The 29-year-old’s mother also made a statement, explaining that it all started with the lack of a drug that was bothering her in 2017. As she notes, no other medicine was ever found, except for a cocktail of drugs that she was taking because she was aggressive. “As we slowly shut her down, we gradually wanted to reopen her with specialists, but none was ever found,” Ms. Ninu said.
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Statement from the 29-year-old’s mother in Kalamata
The girl’s mother stressed that she had taken her to all the specialists, but no one adequately dealt with her situation, adding that her living conditions are “fine”, since she is not locked inside the wooden structure all the time. “There is a structure in the room that is like a crib next to her bed. The wood goes up to the ceiling. Most of the time she’s either there or out in the yard…We do this so she doesn’t attack us.”
“The child has had a hard time. With what she has been through and what little she is doing,” the mother says of her daughter’s aggression. “She just hasn’t worked out, no one is interested in helping her.” The mother asks that the welfare services take an interest in the girl, but remain under her own primary care, which she has taken over entirely. She also comments that they have never kept her situation secret.
