Alex Batty disappeared at the age of 11
Photo: GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE
The British teenager Alex Batty, who was found missing on a street in France after six years, revealed details about why he decided to leave his mother and the nomadic life they led behind. “I realized this wasn’t a good way of life for my future,” Alex said in an interview with The Sun newspaper.
Alex is now 17 years old and disappeared in 2017 at the age of 11 during a trip to Spain. He lived with his mother Melanie, 43, and grandfather David, 64, but the boy's guardians were his paternal grandparents.
During this time away from the UK, Alex was constantly moving and had to work in exchange for food and accommodation. The boy did not attend school and learned languages and mathematics when he could.
Alex told the British newspaper that he started thinking about giving up this lifestyle when he was 14 or 15 years old.
“Constantly moving. No friends, no social life. Work, work, work and don't study. This is the life I imagined if I stayed with my mother,” he said. He said that during this entire time he had only had one friend his own age.
At 16, Alex broached the subject of returning to England with his mother and grandfather. Melanie was against the idea.
“She is very antigovernment and antivaccine. She feared that if I returned to a country and got my ID, I would end up in care. Their watchword was to become 'a slave to the system,'” he explained. However, the grandfather said that the boy should do what was best for him.
The landscape
Alex left the rented farm where he lived with his mother and grandfather in the early hours of December 11, a Monday. In a backpack, the teenager carried four Tshirts, three pairs of pants, socks, a skateboard, a flashlight, 100 euros and a Swiss army knife.
Alex wanted to get to the city of Toulouse, the closest city to the north. However, he also wanted to confuse the police so that his mother and grandfather would not be found and arrested on suspicion of child abduction. So he made up a story that he hiked through the mountains for four days to escape the police.
The teenager slept for two nights until he was found by a delivery man around 3am on Wednesday, December 13th. “My plan was to come to Toulouse and stay as far away as possible. But when the delivery man picked me up, I was so exhausted that I just told a story,” he recalls.
Alex was taken to the police, placed in a nursing home and later deported back to England. He is with his grandmother, who has custody of the boy until he turns 18 in two months.
“I was taken back to my grandmother's house and when I walked in the door she was in the living room. I started shaking and just hugged her tightly,” he said.
“The house is different now, but it still looks the same. The biggest difference is that I was a boy when I was a boy, but now I'm 6 feet tall, so too tall for the bed. It's great to be back. I have received a lot of help from social services and the police and I want to go to college,” he said.
Source: Redação Terra