Two young children, including a five-year-old boy were able to slip away unnoticed from a sport camp that as being held in the West Flemish municipality of Zedelgem. The organisers of the camp didn’t realise that the children had gone until the two turned up at the front door of the house of one of their friends two kilometres away.
The organisers of the camp Sportiek were shocked when they received a phone call from the mother of one of the children telling them that he and his friend had run away and were outside the house of another friend around 2km from the sport camp. The two infants had made their escape during breaktime.
Chris Dedeyne of the sport camp organisers Sportiek told VRT News that “There is a camp for toddlers and another one for primary school children. The toddlers each have a dedicated monitor, the older children have a little more freedom and, for example, are allowed to go alone to the toilet that is a little way away. The doors are always open because we presume that the children won’t run off. They are all 6 already or will have their 6th birthday later this year”.
Incident just after afternoon break.
Mr Dedeyne told VRT News that the incident happened just after afternoon break. "Then an activity was taking place for all the children from the primary school, which is why we didn’t notice that two children were missing from a group of sixty. We didn’t realise until a mother called to tell us that her little boy was outside the front door of one of his friends. The mother came here and was very distraught and she had good reason to be so”.
Sportiek admits that it was in the wrong but asks why the children decided to run away. "Before if we had done that we would have been given a good hiding, but the times have change. It is unfortunate that this has happened, but fortunately everything turned out alright”.
The organisers will examine whether the children in its care should be counted more often. A least one of the two childen involved in Tuesday’s incident have not returned to the sport camp since.