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Forest boy fesses up!!

  • 15-06-2012 04:17PM
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,161 ✭✭✭


    What a little sh1t!! A months grounding would be too good for him!!


    http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/forest-boy-finally-identified-and-admits-i-made-it-all-up-3139613.html

    THE mystery of the 'forest boy' who claimed to have lived wild for five years has been solved with police identifying him as a runaway who made the story up.
    He is Robin Van Helsum, a 20-year old from Hengelo in the Netherlands who was reported missing by his family last September, just days before he turned up in Berlin with his incredible story.

    "He has admitted that he is a fraud," Thomas Neuendorf of the Berlin Police told the Daily Telegraph.

    Berlin police released a photograph of the boy, who identified himself only as "Ray", this week in the hope of finally solving a mystery that made headlines across the world and had baffled detectives for months.

    School friends contacted Dutch police after recognising him from the photograph and his stepmother, seemingly his only family, was contacted to confirm it.

    "We went to him with the new information this morning and he said: 'OK, you got me – I am Robin and I made the whole story up," Mr Neuendorf said on Friday.


Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,033 ✭✭✭uch


    Waster

    21/25



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,773 ✭✭✭madma


    those dutch are crazy...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,154 ✭✭✭Rented Mule


    Never heard of him.


  • Moderators, Music Moderators Posts: 2,162 Mod ✭✭✭✭Oink


    Twat. If there's any justice he'll be charged for wasting police time.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin


    20 years =/= "boy".


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 851 ✭✭✭PrincessLola


    Its pretty harmful what he did, a waste of police time.
    People were even connecting him to the missing baby Ben Needham, because they would be roughly the same age.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,444 ✭✭✭SafeSurfer


    Forest Gump

    Multo autem ad rem magis pertinet quallis tibi vide aris quam allis



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 497 ✭✭akura


    What a tool


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 81,060 ✭✭✭✭biko


    Bat boy is real though.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,533 ✭✭✭Jester252


    Nobody understands him


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,066 ✭✭✭Washington Irving


    Surprised he kept it up this long


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,163 ✭✭✭✭danniemcq


    from Sky News

    I Faked It: Mystery 'Forest Boy' Comes Clean
    An English-speaking teenager dubbed 'forest boy' after claiming he lived in the wild in Germany for half a decade has turned out to be a fake.
    The young man, who turned up in Berlin last year saying his name was Ray and that he had been living in a forest for the last five years, has been named as 20-year-old Robin van Helsum from the Netherlands.

    After the police published his picture earlier this week, a former girlfriend identified him as being from Hengelo, near the German-Dutch border, saying he was reported missing nine months ago.

    When confronted with the details, the young man admitted who he was and confessed to officers to having made up the whole story.

    Police said he left his home in September 2011 without telling his father or stepmother where he was going. The couple alerted the authorities to his absence.

    His stepmother has now confirmed the boy's identity but his father died earlier this year.

    In a statement the police said: "The young man known as Ray was confronted with the results of the investigation.

    "He then confirmed his real personal details and admitted that the previous story - that he had lived for years in the woods - had been invented."

    In a tale that captured the world's imagination, the then-teenager turned up at Berlin city hall on September 5, 2011.

    Speaking English and only a few words of German, the boy said his father had died suddenly in August and that after burying him in the woods he walked north for five days to reach Berlin.

    'Ray' had said his mother 'Doreen' had died in a car accident, which he did not remember, when he was 12 and that he assumed scars on his face were incurred in the crash.

    After a brief stint with Berlin's emergency youth services, 'Ray' was placed in an institution for assisted living and assigned a legal guardian.

    The police never found a body and had trouble believing his tale so earlier this week released his photograph with a plea for information on the case.

    After his disappearance was reported, a Dutch website on missing relatives carried an entry on Robin van Helsum, saying he was born in 1992 and had been missing since September 2, 2011 - three days before he arrived in Berlin.

    Robin "left after leaving a farewell note. He was last seen traveling with a friend to Berlin. Since then every trace of him is gone," the entry on Vermist.nl says.

    Berlin police said even though he had been reported missing, there was no active investigation into his disappearance because there was no evidence of foul play and, aged 19 at the time, he was an adult.

    Police are now looking into whether Mr van Helsum could be charged with fraud.

    Berlin police spokesperson Michael Maas said the boy had made "fools" of the German authorities, adding that he may be required to pay the cost of the investigation into his identity.

    "This is no joke anymore. He made right fools of us. The costs could come down to him," Mr Maas told the Die Welt newspaper.

    wee scrote, funny in the way he messed with German authorities but not funny doing it to his friends and family.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,808 ✭✭✭FatherLen


    i had never heard of this.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Music Moderators, Politics Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 22,380 CMod ✭✭✭✭Dravokivich


    He admitted it last week and he's only washing himself now?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,808 ✭✭✭✭chin_grin


    FatherLen wrote: »
    i had never heard of this.

    And now that I have, I still couldn't give a flying f*ck.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,705 ✭✭✭Balmed Out


    Read about it in a few of the papers last Saturday


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,808 ✭✭✭✭chin_grin


    Balmed Out wrote: »
    Read about it in a few of the papers last Saturday

    Pa............pers?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,810 ✭✭✭✭sbsquarepants


    Fúcking nut job!
    But I suppose something must have driven him to do it? I bet Tom Hanks plays him in the movie:D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,758 ✭✭✭✭TeddyTedson


    I wish I was born into a south american tribe. Thats how life should be!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,916 ✭✭✭shopaholic01


    I wish I was born into a south american tribe. Thats how life should be!

    Imagine the stories you'd have then, Teddy:rolleyes:


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,758 ✭✭✭✭TeddyTedson


    I wish I was born into a south american tribe. Thats how life should be!

    Imagine the stories you'd have then, Teddy:rolleyes:
    ...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 54 ✭✭livinonaprayer


    There's a guy who's lived in a forest in Waterford for about 10 years, no joke. For some reason the press are leaving him alone though


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 27,252 ✭✭✭✭stovelid


    I just hope he copse with all the attention.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,876 ✭✭✭Spread


    Should be sentenced to 6 months nursing by Kim Kardashian. That'd teach choke him!


  • Posts: 31,828 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24281632
    A Berlin court has sentenced a Dutchman to community service for tricking officials into thinking he had lived in a forest for years with his father.

    Robin van Helsum, now 21, was accused of wrongfully claiming help from Berlin youth services for months after turning up in the German capital two years ago.

    He admitted making up a story that his parents were dead and he did not know who he was or where he was from.

    Mr van Helsum was also ordered to undergo counselling.

    Court spokesman Tobias Kaehne explained why van Helsum had been sentenced to 160 hours of community service.

    "The defendant admitted the allegations," he said. "He has no previous convictions, his development has proceeded well and the loss to the tax payer is either nothing or very small."

    He added that the cost to the German state would have been similar had van Helsum simply declared himself a homeless adult.

    Well it goes to show that the Germans can see the wood through the trees.


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