According to witnesses, six-year-old Tomek (name changed) had been neglected since birth. His mother, Joanna (name changed), is seriously dependent on alcohol.
In June 2019, when Tomek was two, drunken arguments at his home and police interventions led the court to restrict his parents’ parental authority. Three years later, when Tomek’s father died, the court—while maintaining the restriction of parental rights—ordered his mother to cooperate with a family assistant and undergo alcohol-dependence therapy in an AA group.
This is how neighbors describe the situation in Tomek’s family home.
“The woman drinks without the slightest restraint,” says one witness. “Tomek is hard of hearing, is not properly cared for, and is raised amid constant arguments that take place during and after drinking binges. There may be other substances there. Joanna’s adult son, who returned to his mother after leaving prison, lives with her. Under the influence of alcohol or drugs, he is very aggressive (he was the one stabbed during the night of March 11–12—editor’s note). Once he tried to set his mother’s apartment on fire. An acquaintance also visits the mother and Tomek—an alcoholic who is also aggressive. Although he was prohibited from approaching Joanna, he keeps coming to her. He is homeless, and he can wash and eat there. She probably calls him herself,” the witness adds.
Why does the probation officer or family assistant not see this?
In January 2023, the probation officer supervising Joanna wrote in a report that he had not encountered at the home where the child lived anyone with whom the mother might drink alcohol. Yet two months later, the six-year-old “goes for a walk” in the middle of the night with his mother and older brother, an adult man. The adults are drunk, the mother’s blood alcohol level is measured at 2.5 per mille, and the six-year-old witnesses a brutal knife attack.
“The probation officer says that visits to Joanna’s home are unannounced,” says a second witness. “But you can see that she has been coming to Joanna’s place for years on the same day, at around the same time. You don’t have to be very clever to remember that. By then, the apartment is clean and she is sober,” the second witness adds.
According to witnesses, the family assistant tries to help as best she can.
“She is just constantly either ill or on leave. In December 2022, a complaint about Joanna’s neglect of her son was taken to the GOPS in Kruszyn, to that assistant, but nothing changed,” the witness adds.
We emailed the Municipal Social Welfare Center in Kruszyn asking whether the complaint had reached them and whether they had responded. We received only a statement from manager Anna Wenena that this was sensitive data subject to special protection, and that information from proceedings conducted by the Center is provided only to law enforcement authorities, the prosecutor’s office and the court upon their request.
They reported that things were bad. Everywhere, they were brushed off.
The people who told us about the six-year-old’s situation in a home where alcohol flowed freely, arguments involved physical violence, and the child was in very poor health because his mother had not taken him to a doctor for years, emphasize the indifference of all the services involved: the probation officer, the police and GOPS. In fact, they say it is not merely indifference, but something more pathological: making sure that the paperwork is in order and failing to respond to the many complaints and appeals from people around them.
“The probation officer herself admitted in conversation that she had seen a great many reports, but thought that someone had it in for her and was acting out of spite,” says a witness. “We called the court and the offices and asked for contact details for the people handling Joanna and Tomek’s case (editor’s note). We informed them that things were bad. The answer was always the same: GDPR, or that someone was on sick leave or vacation. And this just keeps going on all the time—no one responds,” the embittered witness adds.
Then tragedy struck. In the middle of the night, a small child, in the company of drunk and aggressive caregivers, witnessed a brutal knife attack. His adult brother was taken to hospital with a stab wound, his drunk mother was also taken to hospital, and the aggressor was placed in custody for three months. Below, you can see photographs from the scene of the tragedy, to which the mother took the child.
On the night of Sunday, March 12, the child was handed over to close relatives. By around noon, once his mother had sobered up, the probation officer took Tomek home. For those who knew the boy’s situation, this was the biggest shock.
“The child was returned to his mother’s care because no one was able to make a decision throughout the day to take her child away,” a witness said on Sunday, March 12. “The child stated clearly that he did not want to go back to his mother. In accordance with the probation officer’s instructions, before returning the child we asked for a police patrol with a breathalyzer to check whether the mother was definitely sober. The request for them to come was refused, despite our describing the entire situation and explaining that this was what we had been instructed to do. We called 112. The operator accepted the report, and then someone from the police station (in Bolesławiec—editor’s note) called us back to say that they were rejecting the report because they had no grounds to conduct a test. We told them once again that these were the probation officer’s instructions, but the police officer was not interested. Finally, we told him that all calls were being recorded and that if anything happened to the child, it would be their problem. The police officer was outraged, but this still did not persuade him to intervene,” the witness adds.
On Monday, March 13, at the probation officer’s request, the court issued an order securing the child and placing him in foster care for the duration of the proceedings. In this way, on March 14 the child was taken to the Children’s Home in Bolesławiec.
What will happen to the child? Will he return to his mother?
The question is whether the child will return to his mother again once the matter dies down, Joanna cleans the apartment again and maintains temporary sobriety for the duration of the officials’ visit.
The place where little Tomek had lived with his mother is one of many places in the district from which people look away. These are places where love is scarce, where there is no faith in change and where there are many hopeless situations. The police call such places “pathological.” Exhausted and poorly paid social workers speak of plowing a barren field; probation officers have grown accustomed to things somehow carrying on in such places, and they too lack the strength and resources to provide real help, so they make sure that everything is in order in the documents. Paper will accept anything, and later it becomes the only evidence in a case.
In Joanna’s case, a report by the probation officer from two months before the tragedy states:
Joanna’s functioning had improved, and the probation officer had not encountered anyone in her home with whom she might drink alcohol. The probation officer found that the child was clean and well cared for, and that the minor was undergoing ENT treatment. The kindergarten attended by the minor also positively assessed the child’s hygiene and clothing and stated that the child was undergoing ENT examinations. Joanna regularly paid the kindergarten fees. There was no finding that the mother came to the kindergarten after consuming alcohol.