Kidnapped by mother
Alex Batty was missing for six years. Now the teenager is returning to Britain
At age 11, Alex Batty was kidnapped by his mother and grandfather
© Greater Manchester Police/ / Picture Alliance
A skateboard and a flashlight were all Alex Batty had with him when he was spotted by a delivery man. The boy was missing for years. Now he’s back.
A British boy who has been missing for six years is back in his homeland. 17-year-old Alex Batty flew with KLM from Toulouse via Amsterdam to London on Saturday, British police said. He was accompanied by British police officers and a family member, according to Matt Boyle from the police in Manchester. He went on holiday to Spain in 2017 with his mother and grandfather, who were actually banned from contacting them – but never came back.
In the years that followed, the trio lived with an itinerant spiritual community, primarily in southern France, but also in Spain and Morocco. The teenager recently reported to a French police station after secretly leaving the group – a cult according to his custodial grandmother – and wandering around the area for several days. The 17-year-old met his step-grandfather and British police officers in Toulouse and flew with them to Great Britain, the police said.
Grandmother: “Can’t wait to be reunited with him”
“This moment was undoubtedly huge for him and those close to him, and we are glad that they were able to see each other again after all this time,” said the police representative. The priority now is to ensure the well-being of Batty and his family and his “reintegration into society as quickly as possible.” The teenager should be questioned at the appropriate moment about the circumstances of his disappearance. These interviews would be a “difficult process” for the young man, Boyle admitted. Only then will the authority decide whether to begin a criminal investigation, said Boyle.
Batty is to return to his maternal grandmother, who had obtained custody of him before he was separated from him mother had been kidnapped. “I can’t wait to see him when we are reunited,” grandmother Susan Caruana said in a statement released by police.
Alex Batty was eleven years old when he was on holiday in Spain with his mother and grandfather. At the end of the holiday, the grandmother received a video in which her daughter told her that she would not be returning to the UK. Since then the three have been untraceable. “They rejected my lifestyle and my beliefs, (…) they didn’t want Alex to go to school,” Caruana said later in an interview. She repeatedly called in vain in the British media for Alex to come forward.
According to reports in the French newspaper Dépêche du Midi, the three had joined a group of dropouts who lived in tents, caravans or huts in the Pyrenees.
French delivery man picked up Alex Batty on the street
A few days ago, a French delivery man discovered the teenager walking alone in the rain with a flashlight and a skateboard. He offered to take him to the next town and learned his hair-raising story along the way.
“He told me that his mother had kidnapped him years ago and that he had lived in some kind of spiritual community in the mountains,” said delivery man Fabien Accidini. His mother was “a bit strange”. Accidini looked up the teenager’s name on the Internet and discovered that he had been missing for years.
“We called the gendarmerie and they picked us up,” said Accidini. “He was fine, he was just very tired and fell asleep straight away at the police station.” The boy was not abused, he just wanted to live his own life and return to his grandmother.