Kidnapped by mother - Alex Batty was missing for six years. Now the teenager returns to the UK
A British boy who has been missing for six years is back in his home country. On Saturday, 17-year-old Alex Batty flew with KLM from Toulouse via Amsterdam to London, according to the British police. He was accompanied by British police officers and a family member, according to Matt Boyle from Manchester police. He had traveled to Spain on vacation with his mother and grandfather, who were banned from contact, in 2017 - but never returned.
The trio lived with an itinerant spiritual community in the following years, mainly in the south of France, but also in Spain and Morocco. The teenager recently reported to a French police station after secretly leaving the group - a sect 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 the UK, 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," the police representative said. 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 will be questioned about the circumstances of his disappearance at the appropriate time. Boyle admitted that these interviews would be a "difficult process" for the young man. Only then will the authorities decide whether to open a criminal investigation, Boyle said.
Batty is to be returned to his maternal grandmother, who had been granted custody of him before he was abducted by his mother. "I can't wait to see him when we are reunited," the grandmother, Susan Caruana, said in a statement released by police.
Alex Batty was eleven years old when he was on vacation in Spain with his mother and grandfather. At the end of the vacation, the grandmother received a video in which her daughter announced 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 later said in an interview. She repeatedly called on the British media for Alex to come forward, to no avail.
According to reports in the French newspaper "Dépêche du Midi", the three had joined a group of dropouts who were living in tents, caravans or huts in the Pyrenees.
French supplier picked up Alex Batty on the street
A few days ago, a French delivery man spotted the teenager walking alone in the rain with a flashlight and a skateboard. He offered him a lift to the next town and learned his hair-raising story on 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," reported the delivery man Fabien Accidini. His mother was "a bit strange". Accidini searched for 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 at the police station." The boy had not been abused, he had simply wanted to lead his own life and return to his grandmother.
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Source: www.stern.de
