A British boy who disappeared at the age of 11 during a family vacation to Spain in 2017 sent a Facebook message to his grandmother, his legal guardian, this week. “Hello Grandma, it’s me Alex,” the now 17-year-old wrote. “I’m in France Toulouse. I really hope that you receive this message. I love you, I want to come home.”
French media reports say a medical delivery driver came across Batty as he walked in the rain along a road in a town outside Toulouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains on Wednesday morning. “He explained that he had been walking for four days, that he set off from a place in the mountains, though he didn’t say where,” driver Fabien Accidini said, according to the BBC.
Accidini said that Batty told him his name, and an internet search revealed that the teenager had been considered missing for years. Batty then used Accidini’s Facebook account to contact his grandmother, Susan Caruana, who hasn’t seen him for over six years.
Batty, from Oldham in Greater Manchester, was on a vacation with his mother, Melanie, and his grandfather, David, to Spain in 2017 when the trio vanished. The two adults remain wanted in connection with Batty’s apparent abduction and have not yet been found.
After being found this week, Batty was taken to a police station where he is being cared for by the authorities.
At a news conference in the U.K. Friday morning, Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes said Batty’s family are “massively relieved” that their lost boy has been found and that a “whole host of emotions are going through their mind at the moment as they come to terms with this good news.” Batty is expected to return to Britain “over the next couple of days,” Sykes added.
He also said that Batty had spoken with his grandmother on Thursday night and that she was “content” that the teenager she spoke to was really the same person she last knew as her 11-year-old grandchild, though officers would nevertheless have “further checks to do” when he returns home. “I am so happy,” Caruana told The Sun. “I have spoken to him and he is well.” She added that his rediscovery was “such a shock.”
No details were given as to where Batty may have been living for the past six years. Media reports about the case suggest that the teenager may had been living in the remote Pyrenean valleys as part of some kind of traveling commune. The Toulouse prosecutor’s office told the BBC that Batty had refused to say where his mother is or where he’d been living.
The year after Batty disappeared, Caruana revealed that her daughter and ex-husband had once taken Batty to live in a spiritual commune in Morocco. She also speculated that they may have disappeared with the boy in 2017 over some kind of disapproval about the way she was raising him and had taken him to pursue an “alternative lifestyle” abroad.
The area in which Batty was found near the Pyrenees is known for attracting people seeking to live less conventional lifestyles. It is still unclear where Batty has been living, but it reportedly did not have schools or much contact with wider society, according to his family.
“Alex has been brainwashed by the religion [his grandfather] David was in,” Batty’s aunt, Maureen, told MailOnline. “Alex hasn’t had any education while out there, so we don’t know what he’ll be like when he comes home.” She went on to say that she’d been “told that Alex said that he had escaped and he didn’t want to lead that lifestyle.” I just want to know the truth about what’s gone on,” she said.
