Missing since September 2017, the young Briton was found this week in France. He is due to return to England soon.
A long journey. Young Alex Batty, a teenager missing since 2017 and found this week in France, walked alone for “four days and four nights” to escape the “spiritual community” of his mother and grandfather, Antoine reported this Friday Leroy, the deputy public prosecutor of Toulouse.
The latter further indicates that the young Briton, accompanied by his mother and grandfather, has stayed in recent years in Spain, Morocco then in France in the Pyrenees from 2020, he was fifteen years old at the time.
“When we reconstruct his journey a little it appears that he passed through the Pyrénées-Orientales around Perpignan, he also went to Aude as well as Ariège […] without a fixed attachment”, describes Antoine Leroy during his press conference.
Solar panels, carpooling and big houses
“For all these years this young teenager lived carrying solar panels, deciding to only travel by carpool always in places where there are large houses and several families coming in, going out and never being the same,” further develops the deputy public prosecutor of Toulouse.
The family, according to the teenager’s account, fed themselves “thanks to vegetable gardens” and said they “work on the ego, meditation, the non-existence of the real world and reincarnation”.
“The teenager specifies that he was never locked up, sequestered, he had the freedom to come and go but always lived in these conditions,” continues Antoine Leroy.
His mother wanted to go to Finland, his grandfather died
Still according to the deputy public prosecutor of Toulouse, Alex Batty decided to leave his mother who was planning to go to Finland.
“He then understood that this journey had to stop and decided to leave the place where he was to walk for four days and four nights,” says Antoine Leroy, “it is likely that the mother had actually left in Finland as she had planned to do.
“The grandfather, who always made the journey with his daughter and his grandson, died about six months ago in conditions that we do not yet know but the young man attended a meditation ceremony “, specifies the deputy prosecutor.
The young Briton told authorities that he walked exclusively at night and slept during the day, “feeding on various things he could find in the fields and gardens”, until he was found in Revel by a French student who made deliveries during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
“He explained to him who he was, that he was wanted and that he wanted to be protected,” continues the deputy public prosecutor of Toulouse.
Taken into custody by the gendarmes in the commune of Saint-Félix-Lauragais (Haute-Garonne), Alex Batty “does not strictly describe any physical violence on the part of anyone, he describes without the possibility of evoking the term sect […] the term spiritual community.
“He would have suffered sexual assault but when he was little, not during the journey,” also clarified the deputy prosecutor.
The teenager, “in good overall health”, must be repatriated soon to England near Manchester where his grandmother is waiting for him.