Found in France last week six years after his disappearance, now at the heart of an investigation for kidnapping, Alex Batty, a 17-year-old British teenager, explained that he wanted to return to the United Kingdom to secure his future.
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The young man had disappeared while on vacation in Spain with his mother – who did not have his custody – and his grandfather in 2017 and was found last Wednesday in the middle of the night by a delivery driver while walking along of a road near Toulouse.
He returned to Oldham, in the Manchester region (North), on December 16, after six years of a nomadic life with his mother and grandfather.
“I started thinking about leaving when I was 14 or 15,” explained the young man in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun.
“I realized that it wasn’t a very good way of life for my future.” He says he wants to become a computer engineer.
“No friends, no social life. Work, work, work but no study. This is the life I imagined I would live if I stayed with mom,” 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.”
“So when I turned 16 I talked to Grandad about going back to England,” he explained. “My mother was against the idea. She was very anti-government, anti-vax.”
“She wasn’t really open to any other opinions,” he said.
He says he left around midnight on December 11, after an argument with his mother, with a backpack filled with four t-shirts, three pairs of pants, a skateboard, a flashlight, 100 euros and a Swiss army knife, with the idea to reach the nearest city, Toulouse, 110 kilometers to the north.
He said he made up the story that he walked four days through the mountains to cover his tracks, fearing his mother and grandfather would be arrested for child abduction.
After hearing from Alex Batty on his return to the UK, police announced an investigation.
“To protect my mother”
“Manchester Police have launched a criminal investigation into child abduction to understand the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Alex Batty from September 30, 2017 to Wednesday December 13, 2023,” she said in a brief statement.
“I lied to try to protect my mom and grandpa, but I realize they’re probably going to get caught anyway,” Alex Batty said.
“I slept outside on the ground, 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 note before his departure, as “a good person, but not a good mother.”
As for his return to Manchester, “it was raining, as usual,” he said, recounting his reunion with his grandmother, trembling before taking her in his arms.
On the other hand, with his 1.80m height, he finds himself a little cramped in his cot.