Dad leaves son in the cold for 'playing like crap'
Published: 8 Jan 12 10:01 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/38382/20120108/
A 10-year-old boy was left outside in the cold wearing only a shorts and t-shirt in Uppsala in eastern Sweden on Saturday evening after his father felt the boy didn't deserve a ride home to Stockholm because he "played like crap" in a floorball tournament.
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Coach Conny Eriksson told the boy to go inside since it was "seven - eight degrees below freezing outside" but discovered the boy was still there ten minutes later.
The boy then told Eriksson his father had left him there in just shorts and t-shirt.
"It's so cruel, these things can't happen. You don't leave your child in another city and then go home," coach Conny Eriksson told local daily Uppsala Nya Tidning, UNT.
However, the concerned coach was then able to phone the father and asked what was going on.
"But he didn't think that was any of my business and said that 'the boy played like crap and that he could walk home'."
"This is child abuse," Eriksson told UNT.
Since the father refused to make the roughly 70 kilometre return trip from his home in Stockholm to get his son, Eriksson was instead forced to get a hold of parents of one of the boy's teammates who came to pick him up.
The head of the tournament, Peter Wennberg, was livid when he was informed on Saturday evening of what had happened.
"The father's response alone is despicable," he told the paper.
"How can one do something like this? I feel sorry for the kid to have to come home to that parent."
Wennberg also questioned why the coaches of the boy's team didn't stay to make sure everyone had a ride home.
In the 19 years the tournament has been played, Wennberg said he had never seen anything like this.
"But unfortunately there are these kinds of parents," he said.
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If I was the executive editor for The Local.. I would take Joel Linde to the darkest of woods, way up in the North of Sweden then drive a way from him to make his own way home.! :-) ...Would make a good story anyway!
They don't construct paragraphs of similar content.
Instead it is like bullet point sentences.
It fills web pages quicker..
A bit like when a teacher would ask for 1 side of writing, rather than a word count.
But, it very tiresome and unprofessional translating & editing.
I wish the best of luck to the kid!!!
The story states that the floorball tournament was in Uppsala but the father's home was in Stockholm.
And as for all of you who deem it more important o comment about grammar and article prose, go stand out in the cold!!! Your comments demean the abusive experience of this child which is the point of the article. Thank goodness the Father wasn't from Malmo or we would be hearing all sorts of other stuff.
Police? Please, please prosecute this Father for wilfull neglect, child endangerment,!
whatever it takes to teach this immature adult a lesson.
I agree. I wonder, if this is what can happen to the boy in public, what sort of treatment he gets in the home?
To be without remorse for his actions, even to 'justify them' to Eriksson when he telephoned,suggests a considerable deficit in caring. A punishable deficit!
Ah, you are so right. The old,uneducated parents were so much better...kids left school (if they ever had any) at 15, married when they were 14, worked down the mines when they were 9,ah, the god old days!?!?##?
Oh, and what about areas of the world were they are not educated.They have such wonders of parenting as female circumcision, marrying daughters off at 13 to men 4 times their age, ... you are so right about modern times and education. It must have been much better 200 years ago.
There is a thing called progress but it needs active participation in order to function.A scenario obviously lacking with the so-called parent in this case.
I fervently hope that family and/or authorities step in to save this young man from what appears to be a horrible situation.
I also think it sadly shameful that a few persons' comments were merely on translation issues. What kind of people are you folks? I thought the Swedes protected their children. Is it the internet that inspires someone to complain about syntax and ignore a small child, barely dressed, left to freeze or 'walk home' in freezing conditions?? Such indifference by readers is nearly as shocking as the father who should no longer be a father. Shocking due to a total lack of compassion for a vulnerable child.
My thanks to the more caring and compassionate readers. And yes, please, a follow-up on what happens to a child whose father had brutish behavior.
sack of s--t in private.
One of the scary aspects of this is that a senior coach from ANOTHER football team found him, only because he happened to be dropping off equipment. So it would appear that the boy could have frozen to death if he was still there after all his other team mates had left, and he may have been so distraught that he may have emotionally unable to walk up to the doors of strangers to ask them to let him in from the cold before it was too late.
I would like to see the prosecutors convict him for attempted murder, and fine him his entire net worth, whatever that is, and hand that sum to his family, so that the kid along with the rest of the family have a chance to heal from their emotional scars and start a new life.
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What connection does this advertisement you offer have to this boy left to walk home? Are you saying that the idiot father is some religious nut?
At the end of the article you know what is being reported. This isn't the BBC website.
So happy to see that a child's welfare is so important to you and I sincerely hope the boy in question is not reading some of the B***s**t written in some comments here.
# 22 janepl
I totally agree with you
latest news:
"We've come to the conclusion that there's no reason to believe a crime has been committed," says Uppsala Police spokesperson Lisa Sannervik.
By this I guess they mean that because the boy didn't die...then the Father did nothing criminal! Oh dear, one of the rare black marks on my report card for Sweden that I have been keeping for 23 years.
Yes, it would appear now that there is a clear and simple alternative to spanking, which is against the law here is Sweden, namely to drive 'misbehaving' children 80km away from home and let them freeze to death in the forest like unwanted kittens or puppies.
Note that the definition of 'misbehaving' has been broadened to include football playing that is not up to the standards expected by at least one parent. Cruel and unusual punishment of a child is clearly waranted in this situation.
And the father promised that he would not leave to son to walk home again, as long as he played better next time.
This whole incident is symptomatic of the whole parent living life through their children. The incidences of fights and brawls and shouting that goes on in all junior sports. Not from the players but from the parents. Parents who failed at all sports when they where kids, trying to get success via their own kids. This guys actions, rather than make his kid play better next time, will have the reverse affect as the kid will be far to nervous to play well.
Driving 80km away on a night when it is -8 C outside, and your son is weaing only shorts and a short sleaved shirt, and with no knowledge if anyone else picked him up (no one had), is not teaching him a lesson, it is committing a crime.
And does poor football play constitute 'testing your boundaries'?
Is this the best you can do? You must have been left outside in the cold sometime.