The 17-year-old British boy Alex Batty, who was found in France After being kidnapped for six years by his mother and grandfather without having custody, he admitted that he began to think about escaping when he was “14 or 15 years old.”
The newspaper ‘The Sun’ published this Friday the first interview with the teenager after he was found on the 13th by a delivery driver in a mountainous area of France.
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In it, Batty talked about how he decided to leave his mother and grandfather behind. Who, after kidnapping the young man when he was 11 years old, in 2017, began an “itinerant” life in groups that were part of a “spiritual community.”
According to his story, he made the decision to leave after an argument with his mother, which led him to conclude that “he couldn’t live with her.”
Added to this was his aspiration to become a software technician, which has increased in the last year. This made him realize that nomadism “was not a good way of life” for the future he wanted.
Alex Batty tells of his extraordinary escape for first time & says ‘Mum’s a great person, but she’s not a great mother’ pic.twitter.com/2b9trr0R2b
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 22, 2023
“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,” she considered.
The young man indicated that he had already raised the possibility of leaving with his mother and grandfather, something to which she was against. However, her grandfather told her to do “whatever was best for him.”
“She is a great person and I love her. But she is not a good mother,” Batty expressed 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, and a flashlight. Plus, a Swiss army knife and some money, until she ran into the delivery man two days later.
Alex Batty’s emotional message to mum Melanie & grandad as he addresses them for first time since fleeing hippy life pic.twitter.com/WHVsqTUmYF
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 22, 2023
So that his relatives could not be traced by the police, he 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.
Batty now resides in the English town of Oldham, near Manchester, with his grandmother Susan, who has become his guardian until he comes of age in two months, ‘The Sun’ notes.
