A British teenager who disappeared in 2017 and was found this week in southwest France near Toulouse will have to be repatriated to England near Manchester this weekend and returned on Saturday or Sunday to his maternal grandmother, who has custody of him has him.
• Also read: 17-year-old British man who disappeared in 2017 found in France
“He will be returned to his maternal grandmother tomorrow (Saturday) or at the latest the day after tomorrow (Sunday),” explained on Friday the deputy public prosecutor of Toulouse, Antoine Leroy, who was in contact with the ambassador of Grande-Bretagne in France about the repatriation of this boy man, Alex Batty, to organize it in the best possible way.
“Our priority is to bring him back to the United Kingdom,” said police in the Greater Manchester area in northwest England, where the now 17-year-old teenager comes from.
AFP
“There remains work to establish the exact circumstances of this disappearance,” Deputy Chief Commissioner Chris Sykes told a press conference six years ago.
Alex Batty, then aged 11, left the UK on September 30, 2017, to spend a holiday in Spain with his non-custodial mother Melanie Batty and his grandfather David Batty.
Alex Batty's “Journey”
But contrary to expectations, he did not return to England on October 8th of the same year. Extensive searches with the help of the Spanish authorities were unable to locate him.
Mr Leroy described the “journey” of Alex Batty, his mother and grandfather, which passed through Spain and then Morocco before reaching the French Pyrenees, where investigators said they would have remained in the departments of Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude and Ariège .
For six years, including two years in France, he led a “nomadic” life within a “spiritual” community and never stayed in the same place for more than a few months, the deputy public prosecutor described.
AFP
Although the young man did not mention any physical violence to investigators during the six years that his abduction lasted, he did “claim to have suffered sexual assault when he was little,” at the age of “five or six years (…). .) within his family, without saying more,” noted Mr. Leroy.
Alex Batty, described by the deputy prosecutor as “vividly intelligent and very calm”, would have decided to escape after her mother announced her intention to go to Finland, where she is “probably now”, without her grandfather, the one who would have done it died six months ago.
The teenager, who does not speak French, had been walking towards Toulouse for four nights before he was discovered at 3 a.m. on Wednesday by a young delivery man who took him to the gendarmerie, according to the judge.
Thanks to close cooperation with the French authorities and Alex Batty's family, the young man's identity was subsequently confirmed, according to Greater Manchester Police.
AFP
Currently, the young man is “accommodated, the social services have taken care of him,” the Toulouse prosecutor, Samuel Simon-Vuelta, had previously told AFP, without specifying where he was, but stressed that “recognition is firmly established is no problem”.
“This is an extraordinary moment for Alex, his family and the people of Oldham,” the Greater Manchester town from which he comes, Mr Sykes added, according to the Greater Manchester Police press release.
Grandma relieved
“I can hardly describe how relieved and happy I am that Alex was found safe and sound,” grandmother Susan Caruana said, according to another police statement released late Friday.
“I spoke to him last night (Thursday) and it was so nice to hear his voice again and see his face again. I can't wait until we are reunited,” she added, asking that the family's privacy be respected upon her grandson's return.
She said in 2018 that she believed Alex's mother and grandfather, from whom she is divorced, took him into a “spiritual community” in Morocco to live.
AFP
Delivery man Fabien Accidini told French regional newspaper La Dépêche du Midi that he encountered the teenager in the middle of the night on a road near Chalabre in the Aude department, about a hundred kilometers from Toulouse.
“He left while the rain was falling in large drops (…) I decided to offer to drop him off somewhere,” he said, specifying that Alex Batty had “told him that his mother had 'moved out'.”
“Since then he has been living in a luxury house in Spain with around ten people. He would have arrived in France around 2021. In the middle of the weekend he decided to leave his mother to join his family in England. He had been traveling in the mountains for more than four days!” he added.