Alex Batty, a 17-year-old British teenager, was found in France last week six years after his disappearance and is currently the focus of a kidnapping investigation. He stated that he wanted to return to the UK to secure his future.
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The young man disappeared in 2017 while on holiday in Spain with his mother – who did not have custody – and grandfather and was found by a delivery driver on a road near Toulouse in the middle of the night last Wednesday.
On December 16, he returned to Oldham in the Manchester (North) region with his mother and grandfather after six years of nomadic life.
“I started thinking about leaving when I was 14 or 15,” the young man explained in an interview with British tabloid The Sun.
“I realized it wasn't a very good lifestyle for my future.” He says he wants to be a computer engineer.
“No friends, no social life. Work, work, work, but no studies. This is the life I imagined if I stayed with my mother,” he said.
Skateboard and Swiss army knife
“It would always be the same whether in France or Spain,” he added, “in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, no one my age.”
“When I turned 16 I spoke to my grandfather about returning to England,” he explained. “My mother was against the idea. She was very anti-government and anti-vaccine.”
“She wasn’t really open to other opinions,” he said.
He says he left around midnight on December 11 after an argument with his mother with a backpack full of four T-shirts, three pairs of pants, a skateboard, a flashlight, 100 euros and a Swiss Army knife with the idea of reaching the nearest one City, Toulouse, 110 kilometers north.
He said he made up the story that he hiked through the mountains for four days to cover his tracks, fearing his mother and grandfather would be arrested for child abduction.
After hearing from Alex Batty upon his return to the UK, police announced an investigation.
“To protect my mother”
“Manchester Police have launched a criminal investigation into child abduction to establish the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Alex Batty from September 30, 2017 to Wednesday, December 13, 2023,” she said in a short statement.
“I lied to protect my mom and grandpa, but I realize they'll probably get caught anyway,” Alex Batty said.
“I slept on the floor outside, it was freezing,” he told The Sun. He says he covered around thirty kilometers in two days.
He describes his mother, for whom he left a message before he left, as “a good person, but not a good mother.”
On his return to Manchester, “it was raining as usual,” he recounted his reunion with his grandmother, shaking before taking her in his arms.
On the other hand, at 1.80 m tall, he feels a bit cramped in his crib.