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Alex Batty affair: community or sectarian influence, gray areas to be clarified
While the British teenager was found after disappearing for six years, many questions remain about the possible involvement of a community or cult. Because in France, there are more and more of them. – (France 2)
While the British teenager was found after disappearing for six years, many questions remain about the possible involvement of a community or cult. Because in France, there are more and more of them.
In a remote hamlet in Aude, a neighbor tells us he came across Alex Batty. “He was at the lodge, working with his grandfather. He didn’t speak much French but he was friendly.“, he explains. For two years, the child, his mother and his grandfather lived from village to village in the foothills of the Pyrenees. An alternative way of life, without fixed ties, in nomadic communities, numerous in the region. A resident of Aude meets these communities regularly: “They do alternative medicine, massages, but it’s their choice of life“.
Sectarian excesses have doubled in 10 years
On the heights of the department, we met Alain Besson. He created an ecovillage where around ten people live in a community, sometimes with people passing through. For him, his way of life has nothing of a sect: “We do nature a service, we make it more beautiful. We try to be ecological. So the fact of sometimes being classified as a sect can be experienced as an injustice.“. In the case of Alex Batty, the investigation does not show for the moment that he was under the influence of a sect. Utopia or drift, for some these movements are not without danger. In France , sectarian abuses have been reported and multiplied by 10 according to the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses. There were 1,875 in 2010 and 4,020 in 2020.
