Turkish boy found with legs chained sent to orphanage

ESKİŞEHİR

A 12-year-old boy who was found with chains on his legs in the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir has been sent to an orphanage.

The boy was found sitting near a construction site by workers after his uncle chained his legs together as punishment for arriving home late.

Upon workers’ notification, police detained the boy’s uncle but released him a short while later, Doğan News Agency reported on Nov. 2.

The boy reportedly moved to Eskişehir from the eastern province of Van with his two siblings to live with their uncle and grandmother after his father died in a traffic accident and his mother abandoned them.

After police detained his uncle, the boy was taken by Family and Social Policies Ministry officials and sent to an orphanage.

His uncle’s father and brother, whose identities were kept confidential, told reporters that “they could not find a solution to the boy returning home late all the time.”

“He was just one-year-old when his father died. He was sent to an orphanage after his mother abandoned him. He is very dear to us and if we were torturing him we wouldn’t have taken him into our house. No such thing can happen in our family,” said his uncle’s brother.

“He has bread, water, the internet and a computer in the house but he doesn’t come home until 1 or 2 a.m. What can you do if he doesn’t show up and has used drugs?” he added.

The boy’s grandfather, meanwhile, said he had stopped going to school.

“We enrolled him at a school but he didn’t go ... When he stopped showing up at night we were scared,” he added.