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A mother left her two children alone on the Bieszczady Mountains hiking trail in southern Poland on Saturday because they were "whining" and she wanted to reach the summit alone.
"We are near the point where the blue and yellow trails split above Muczne. We are hiking with a group from the PTTK branch in Rzeszow. Suddenly we hear a piercing sob and a child’s scream. We stop, and two boys – a crying eight-year-old and his fourteen-year-old brother – are standing, bewildered, by the side of the trail," the Rzeszow branch of the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK) wrote on its Facebook profile.
"We find out that their mother has left them behind and gone on alone to reach the summit (which from this point is about an hour away). She told them that if they were whining and didn’t want to walk, they should wait for fifteen minutes," the post continued.
The boys were left waiting on their own for far longer than 15 minutes.
"No reflection, no sense of guilt"
Conditions on the trail were poor; as the author of the PTTK post notes, a thick fog had settled over the area, prompting shocked tourists to take care of the young boys.
"After about a quarter of an hour, a fit-looking woman appears. The younger son grabs her by the hand and stops crying. When we point out how she could leave underage children alone in high mountains, in such weather conditions, she responds coolly that she was gone only for a moment, that she wanted to go higher, and that they were forcing her to give up on achieving the planned goal," PTTK said.
PTTK criticised the women for showing "no sense of guilt."
"The forced word 'sorry' comes from her lips only when I say that this could amount to charges from the public prosecutor. My reply, that she should not be apologising to me but to the children, is met with no reaction..." the author of the post wrote.
The incident was reported to local authorities and has sparked widespread public outrage in Poland regarding parental responsibility and safety on mountain trails.