Missing Briton returns to his grandma
An 11-year-old boy disappears with his mother and grandfather while on vacation in Spain in 2017. The grandmother reports him missing. Suddenly he reappears at a police station in the south of France. Now the young Brit is back home.
A young Briton missing for six years, who unexpectedly turned up in France a few days ago, has returned to the UK. The 17-year-old Alex Batty flew with KLM from Toulouse via Amsterdam to London on Saturday, according to the British police. He was accompanied by British police officers and a family member, according to Matt Boyle from Manchester police.
"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 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.
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 appealed in vain to the British media for Alex to come forward.
Kidnapped by the mother
According to reports in the French newspaper "Dépêche du Midi", the three had joined a group of dropouts living in tents, caravans or huts in the Pyrenees.
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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The missing teenager, Alex Batty, was believed to be living with his mother and grandmother's abductor in a commune in the Pyrenees for several years. In a surprising turn of events, he was found in France by a French delivery man.
Despite being reported missing from Great Britain in 2017, Alex Batty's case gained international attention when he was found in Spain, having been living with his mother and her associates, away from his maternal grandmother's custody.
Source: www.ntv.de
