A Belgian woman is furious after a visit to the Dutch amusement park Efteling. She got into trouble with an employee when she wanted to go to the toilet with her eight-year-old autistic son just before closing time. She eventually had to spend the night in a police cell.
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“My autistic son has been humiliated in Efteling”: Liza Kurukulasuriya, a Belgian of Sri Lankan descent who works at a European think tank in Brussels, writes above a long Facebook post about what happened to her on Sunday evening in Efteling.
“Black bitch”
Fifteen minutes before closing time, she went to the toilet in Efteling with her 8-year-old son, who suffers from autism. There, a female employee of the park suddenly said that the toilets were closing. There was another woman in front of them and she complained in Dutch that she had been waiting for a long time. She was eventually allowed to go, after which Liza’s son got more and more difficult.
The boy started to jump, moved his hands nervously, and kept calling I have to pee, I have to pee, I have to pee. “I politely asked to let him go, said he had autism and showed the badge for people with disabilities. “She said that the badge was only for attractions and not to the toilet,” Liza’s husband said on Facebook. “The Efteling employee became increasingly angry and yelled CLOSED. Then she mumbled You black bitch. ” Liza ignored the woman and walked in with her son anyway. The older woman even let him go and defended him: “He is a little child.” Then some pushing was done with the employee.
Never again
The employee called security, while the man already went to the car with both of their children. The woman was eventually held for two hours until the police arrived. “When my wife said that she wanted to file a complaint against the employee, the police said that it was not possible because it was already after midnight and the employee had already filed a complaint. And that while it was my wife who had asked to call the police ”, the man expresses his incomprehension and anger. His wife eventually spent the night in a police cell. “She was treated like a criminal, a real shame. After 17 hours in custody, the complaint of the Efteling employee was also classified because there was no criminal intention whatsoever on my wife. We are now waiting for the prosecutor to file a complaint against the woman and the two security guards. ”
The man says the suffering for his family was enormous. “I will never forgive Efteling for making my autistic son so stressed and anxious. I will never forgive them for the tears of my children when they saw my wife treated like this. I never set foot in it again. I don’t want any compensation from them, but I’m going to tell my story to everyone. ”
The story was shared en masse, after which Liza also briefly crawled into her pen. “Thanks for the support,” she writes. “Who knows, maybe justice will come.”
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