UK Boy Kidnapped by Mom and Taken to Commune Is Found in France After 6 Years – Now a Teen, Alex Batty Escaped Through Mountain Passes

A British family’s painful saga came to an end this week after 6 years of suffering and wondering about the whereabouts of Alex Batty.

The boy who was kidnapped by his own mother six years ago, while on vacation in Spain, and – his family says – was ‘brainwashed’ into living in a Commune.

Batty has now been found in France, where authorities say that Alex’s family have confirmed his identity.

Batty, who is now 17 years old, was found in Revel, near Toulouse, France, when a driver spotted the teenager looking lost and haggard by the side of a road, and drove him to a police station.

CBS News reported:

“The teen told the driver that he’d been living in an alternative community with his mother, wanted to live his own life, and he decided to leave. He was taken to the prosecutor’s office where his identity was confirmed by family members, the BBC reported.

‘He should soon be returning to England’, a spokesperson from the Toulouse public prosecution office said to Reuters news agency, adding that the criminal investigation into Batty’s disappearance is being led by British authorities.”

Batty went to Spain with his mother and grandfather for a family vacation in 2017, but the three of them didn’t return on their scheduled flight – and then disappeared, sparking a massive police manhunt.

“His grandmother told local British media Batty and his mother lived in a commune in Morocco in 2014 as part of an ‘alternative lifestyle’, which she thought lay behind the boy’s disappearance. She said they did not want the boy to attend school.”

The police is searching for his mother, Melanie Batty, and his grandfather, David Batty, in connection with the teenager’s disappearance.

His grandmother and legal guardian, Susan Caruana, always believed her daughter Melanie and ex-husband (also called David) had taken him abroad to pursue an ‘alternative lifestyle’.

Daily Mail reported:

“Alex’s aunt, Maureen Batty, 73, has told how relatives feared for Alex’s wellbeing after so long away from his family in Britain and outside mainstream education. Maureen said: ‘Alex has been brainwashed by the religion [his stepfather] David was in. […] Alex hasn’t had any education while out there, so we don’t know what he’ll be like when he comes home. [He] has had it rough. It is a mess. I’ve 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’.” 

Alex fled the ‘spiritual community’ in the Pyrenees, and walked for four days through mountains passes, trying to reach his grandmother in England.

Fabien Accidini, a chiropractic student from Toulouse, was driving along a road when he spotted Alex walking along in pouring rain at around 2am on Wednesday.

“Alex said he had been trekking across the French Pyrenees for four days before Fabien, 26, spotted him – and one of the first things Alex did was message his grandmother from the student’s phone to say ‘I love you, I want to come home’. 

[…] ‘He said his mother kidnapped him when he was 12 years old. Since then he had lived in Spain in a luxury house with around ten people for three years’, Fabien said.”

Alex told Fabien that he had been living with his mother and grandfather in a ‘spiritual community’, after they had kidnapped him.

“Fabien said Alex had told him that his mother was ‘a little crazy’ and ‘in some bizarre delirium when he was talking about spirituality’ but insisted that she had never imprisoned him and he could ‘leave when he wanted’.”