Last week the surprise reappearance of a British teen who’d vanished while on holiday many years earlier made global headlines. We take a look at the story of Alex Batty.
Alex Batty had been missing in Spain for six years when he turned up on a French country road after escaping a “spiritual community”.
Alex was only 11 when he disappeared along with his mother, Melanie Batty, and grandfather, David Batty, and was now 17.
What happened during those years Alex was overseas and how, and why did he go missing? Here’s everything we know so far.
How did he disappear?
Alex had been on a family holiday near Marbella with his mum and grandfather in 2017.
Greater Manchester Police
Alex Batty, from England, vanished in Spain six years ago. He’s now been found alive and well.
Susan Caruana, his grandmother and legal guardian, said her daughter Melanie asked to take Alex on a family holiday to Spain along with her father, Caruana’s ex-husband, David. She agreed despite concerns.
But the trio never returned to the UK as expected and police appealed for information on Alex’s disappearance, and Melanie and David Batty were wanted in connection with his alleged abduction.
His grandmother said her daughter and ex-husband had previously taken the boy to a commune in Morocco in 2014 and believed a disagreement about his care could have been behind the disappearance.
“The reason I believe they have done this is because, basically, my lifestyle, my belief systems, are not what they agree with,” she said.
Where did Alex go?
The teenager told police he had been living in “spiritual communities” in Spain, Morocco and France, The guardian reported.
The owners of a B&B in the Pyrenees, told The Telegraph, Alex, whom they knew as Zack, had stayed with them on a number of occasions since the autumn of 2021, and had wanted to return to the UK to get the identity documents he needed to go to school.
Greater Manchester Police
The boy was last seen with his mum Melanie Batty (L) and granddad David Batty (R).
They said when the teenager, his mother and grandfather, first approached them Alex “was looking for a place to stay” in a “‘WorkAway’ type formula in which he contributed to the maintenance” of the B&B “in exchange for accommodation and food”.
The couple added that the teenager “left several times to join his mother in her successive places of residence between Aude and Ariege” and that they “didn’t have much contact with her”.
The B&B owners said in a statement they uploaded onto their website they only discovered Alex’s real name “and full story” after it was reported in the news.
Alex was found near Toulouse on December 13 after leaving the rural community where he had been living with his mother and grandfather, who had “shunned modern life”.
British expats who knew his mother believed she was a “conspiracy theorist” who thought Covid was “created by the state to control people”.
She is believed to have travelled to Finland shortly before Alex was discovered wandering alone in the Pyrenees, and was said by locals to have been living under a different name in the remote region.
Where is he now?
The teenager has now returned to the UK and has been reunited with his grandmother Susan Caruana, in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
In his first public remarks since the ordeal ended, he told The Telegraph he was “happy to be home for Christmas”.
“I’m really sorry I can’t say much… but there’s no doubt I’m happy to be home for Christmas,” Alex said.
As he returned home, a small dog ran out of the front door of his grandmother’s house and down the street. She shouted after it: “Don’t you go missing like Alex,” before ushering the pet back inside.
