RSS Feed
June 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“OK, you got me,” he confessed. “I am Robin and I made the
whole story up.”
Last night, his troubled past emerged as friends and family in his home town
of Hengelo, near the German border, told of his life, his character and what
set him upon this unusual course.
His parents divorced when he was a toddler and his mother took him and his
elder brother Thomas, now 22, to Portugal. His father, Johan van Helsum,
fought a custody battle and, upon winning the case, flew out to bring his
sons back to the Netherlands.
“Robin was really traumatised by those early years,” said Mo Rahim
Rigi, his former flatmate. “It unnerved him. His mother would try to
get in touch, send him birthday cards and that kind of thing, but he didn’t
want to know.”
Robin left the family home at the age of 16, after his father – described as
strict and conservative – took a dim view of his lifestyle. Mr van Helsum
agreed to let him move to the nearby town of Almelo, to live in supervised
accommodation. Father visited son regularly, but the situation was far from
ideal.
“He was asked to leave after he got a girl pregnant,” his
stepmother, Ellen van Helsum, told a local newspaper yesterday . “She
had been living with two other boys and Robin in the care home.”
Their son, Damien, is now two years old. Friends said Robin had wanted to be a
good parent and visited the child occasionally but he had not planned on
being a father at 18.
He returned to Hengelo – an attractive suburban town of 80,000 – and went to
school at ROC van Twente college, where he began a course in media and
communications. But he was not interested in academic life and soon dropped
out.
In August 2010 he moved into a two-bedroom flat with his friend Mr Rigi, a
fellow student from his early teenage years. A year later, he suddenly
disappeared.
And to the astonishment of the authorities in Berlin, the “Forest Boy”
arrived in their city – with his remarkable tale of survival.
Last night Robin was still in Berlin, debating whether to return to the
Netherlands. And his friends and family were struggling to come to terms
with the whole bizarre tale.
At the family home – a well-tended red brick house, with hanging baskets
outside the front door – Mrs van Helsum said she was stunned by his actions.
Robin’s father died in February and she is struggling to come to terms with
the shocks.
“I am still mourning my husband, and then suddenly I find out our son has
been found,” she said. “I have had two enormous shocks and it is
hard to cope.”
She also said it was difficult to hear reports that her stepson’s troubled
relationship with his father drove him away. “My family is being
treated badly,” she said. “I feel under siege with everyone
pointing the finger.”
In May last year, father and son had argued over money when Robin fell behind
in rent. He had not spoken to his father for almost four months before he
disappeared.
But in an emotional letter home to his father and stepmother from Berlin,
Robin said he was “sorry for all the suffering” he had caused and
had left because he was “totally fed up with this lifestyle.” He
also apologised to his father, who was fighting cancer, for not visiting him.
“I have had no time to spend with you and even no time to visit you in
hospital where you have had so many operations. Visiting you would have sent
me deeper into the dark hole.”
Mr van Helsum knew that he was terminally ill, and so made an emotional appeal
on Twitter and on Dutch television to his son to return. In November he went
to the police to ask for their help.
“Johan said to the police in Hengelo: ‘I am ill, and I would love to have
contact with my son Robin,’ ” explained Mrs van Helsum. But Robin, in
Germany under the care of local authorities, was apparently unaware of the
appeals.
In February Mr van Helsum married Ellen three days before he died. Mr van
Helsum worked as a bus driver in the town for many years until his illness
forced him to stop.
Richard, one of his colleagues, said: “He did everything for his boys. He
changed shifts frequently to be with them for important occasions, and then
gave a party for colleagues who had changed shifts with him. His two boys
were at that party. He was a nice man.”
Robin’s friends tell a different story, explaining that it was noticeable how
distant he was from his family.
“He was quite mysterious about his parents,” said one of his
friends, pausing from her waitressing work in a central Hengelo café, amid
the Saturday street market. “We are really close but he never ever
talked about them.”
He occasionally smoked marijuana and was known to have financial and family
problems. But it was not considered anything serious.
Mr Rigi, his former flatmate, said: “It’s true that he didn’t have the
most balanced start. But he wasn’t a person to whinge about it; he had big
dreams of working to help young people who went through similar experiences.
“That’s why it is so strange that he just disappeared. I knew him really
well – we would spend hours talking – and no one saw this coming.”
Robin’s friends heard that he set off to Berlin by foot, then hitchhiking and
taking the train for short stretches.
He travelled with his friend Lex, who had also been in the care home in
Almelo. But Lex found the journey too tough, and to Robin’s anger he
telephoned his mother and persuaded her to pay for him to return to the
Netherlands.
“We found out from Lex that Robin was in Berlin,” said Mr Rigi. “But
he wouldn’t get in touch with any of us. We were sad and a bit confused, but
just hoped that he was doing OK and getting on with his life. None of us
knew about this Forest Boy story.”
Robin had told the authorities in Germany he was called Ray. In Hengelo, his
childhood friend Ray van Ravensberg laughs when asked why Robin used his
name as a pseudonym.
“I guess Ray is just a universal, international name,” he said. “But
he was a good guy – even if he did have problems. Sometimes he was quite
closed inside his own head, and I think life just got too much for him.”
Now all his friends are trying to persuade him to return, hoping that through
Facebook and the media they can convince him to come home. “We all
really want to see him again,” said Mr Rigi. “I would say to him,
‘You definitely messed up there. But we’re just glad you’re safely home’.”
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
