After being located last week in a mountainous area of France, Alex Batty, the British minor who disappeared in 2017 in Marbella, has offered details about what his life was like during the six years in which he supposedly lived in a spiritual community. Following his discovery on December 13, the British police have launched a criminal investigation.
Batty was kidnapped at the age of 11 by his mother and grandfather - who did not have custody - during a holiday in Marbella (Málaga). Since then he lived in a traveling "spiritual community" in the mountains between Ariège and Aude, on the French side of the Pyrenees. In an interview with The Sun, the 17-year-old admits that he started thinking about running away two or three years ago. He also details that, after being kidnapped, he began an "itinerant" life in groups that were part of a "spiritual community", investigated for possible sectarian behavior.
According to his story, he decided to leave after an argument with his mother, which led him to conclude that "he couldn't live with her." Apparently, the parent had informed him that they were going to Finland, a decision that caused the teenager to leave the community with the aim of joining his family in England. Added to this was his aspiration to become a software technician, which increased in the last year, which made him realize that nomadism "was not a good way of life" for the future he wanted.
"I don't know what would have happened if I had stayed with my mother, but the last few years allowed me to get an idea: constant moving, no friends, no social life, working and not being able to study," he declares.
The young man says that he had already raised the possibility of leaving with his mother and grandfather, something to which she was against, but to which his grandfather responded that he should do "whatever was best for him." "She is a great person and I love her, but she is not a good mother," Batty acknowledges in her statements to the British media.
On Monday, December 11, he fled the farm where they lived carrying a backpack with clothes, a skateboard, a flashlight, a Swiss army knife and some money, until he met a delivery driver. So that his relatives could not be tracked by the police, it was invented that he had walked for four days in the mountains and, despite knowing where he was, he pretended to be lost in the French commune of Quillan.
Officers from the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) met with Batty after his return from France, an essential requirement so that the security authorities could confirm the nature of the investigation, according to information collected by the British network BBC.
Batty, who returned to the United Kingdom last Saturday, traveled to Oldham, near Manchester, where his grandmother and legal guardian lives until he comes of age in two months.
