December 21st 2023.
Alex Batty had been missing for six long years before he was found walking alone on a remote stretch of road in the French Pyrenees. He was only 11 when his mother Melanie and grandfather David had taken him away on what should have been a two-week family holiday in Spain. Now 17, Alex was finally able to make his first public comments on his return to the UK, saying he’s ‘glad to be home for Christmas’.
Investigators are now trying to find out why Alex disappeared and what happened in the time he was gone. According to Alex’s grandmother Susan Caruana, she believes the pair took him away planning to live an ‘alternative lifestyle’. Alex told French officials he had been travelling from place to place with his mum and grandad, growing their own food and meditating. He had been living in a spiritual community for six years.
It was chiropody student Fabien Accidini who found Alex walking across the Pyrenees ‘for four days and four nights’. Alex told Fabien he had been ‘kidnapped by his mother’ and had been living in France for the past two years in a spiritual community with her. Fabien called the police, and it was then he realised the whole story.
Where had Alex been living? According to Fabien, Alex had spent three years living in a luxury house in Spain with 10 others before leaving for France in 2021. Alex had also been living in different areas across the south of France in different spiritual communities with his mother. He had been staying with a family in a remote mountain farmhouse since autumn 2021, where his grandfather worked as a handyman in exchange for room and board. The owners of the farmhouse said they saw Alex as part of their family and that he wanted to live a normal life.
Alex was eager to go to school and get back to a normal life, and for that he needed his ID which he had told the family he no longer had. So he decided to leave the farmhouse and go find his mother to get his identity papers.
Alex’s story is one of resilience and hope, and his return to the UK is a reminder of the importance of family and home.
Alex Batty, 17, made his first public comments after returning to the UK in time for Christmas. He had been gone for six long years after his mother and grandfather took him away on what was supposed to have been a two-week family holiday to Spain. Now, investigators are trying to piece together what happened during the time he was gone.
Alex had gone on the trip with his mother, Melanie, and grandfather, David, in Marbella in October 2017. His grandmother, Susan Caruana, believed the pair had taken him away planning to live an ‘alternative lifestyle’. Alex told French officials he spent the time travelling between Spain, Morocco, and France with them, living in a ‘spiritual community’ and growing their own food.
Alex was found by chiropody student Fabien Accidini near Toulouse, France in the early hours of December 13. Alex told him he had been kidnapped by his mother and was part of a ‘strange spiritual community’. He had been walking across the Pyrenees for four days and four nights.
The family Alex had been staying with said he had been living on-and-off in their remote mountain farmhouse since fall 2021. The owners of the farmhouse, Frederic Hambye and Ingrid Beauve, said Alex’s mother had not lived there and had been staying in various places in the south of France looking for a ‘spiritual community’.
Alex told the owners he wanted to live a normal life, see his grandmother again, and get a new identity so he could go back to school. He left the farmhouse on December 17 to join his mother.
Alex’s story is still developing, and we are still learning more about what happened during the six years he was gone. It is unclear what the future holds for him but hopefully he can get the closure he needs.
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