He is British, he disappeared in Spain in 2017, when he was a child, and they have just found him in France, six years later, as a teenager. It is the story of Alex Batty, who lost track of him while spending the holidays with his mother and his grandfather in Malaga. He was 11 years old. This Wednesday the police located a 17-year-old near Toulouse who, as confirmed by the area prosecutor, is Alex Batty.
The boy did not have documentation and, according to the newspaper Libération, he did not want to provide his identity. The details of his disappearance are somewhat unclear. According to the French press, he was on vacation with his mother and his grandfather, who did not have guardianship of him and who were prohibited from contacting him. According to the aforementioned media, they were last seen on October 8.
His grandmother and legal guardian had reported a kidnapping and assured that her daughter and the boy’s grandfather wanted to take him to join a sect “and lead another way of life.” Following the disappearance, an investigation was opened in the United Kingdom, but until now it had not been possible to find him.
A truck driver found the young man, who was wandering along a regional highway and who claims that he left the sect a week ago. The driver called the gendarmes in Revel, near Toulouse, who verified his identity. The Toulouse prosecutor has confirmed that he will return to the United Kingdom soon. The newspaper La Depeche du Midi has reported that the two adults and the child used to sleep in caravans and that they finally found refuge in “a traveling spiritual community.”
Always according to this medium, the boy has assured the gendarmes that he decided to leave this community last week. He walked for days through the mountain until he found the truck driver who found him. French authorities have validated the story. “This is a complex and long-running investigation and we must carry out further investigations and put in place appropriate safeguarding measures,” a Manchester Police spokesperson said in a statement.