An English boy named Alex Batty has been found in France, 6 years after he was abducted when he was 11 while on holiday with his mother and grandfather in Spain.
It was the boy himself who asked the Toulouse police for help after he managed to escape from a sect that lives in tents and camps at the foot of the Pyrenees.
Alex was on holiday in Marbella with his mother, then 37, and grandfather David, who was 58. Both had forbidden him to be with the child at the time, due to family difficulties, but had decided to leave anyway, promising to return from the trip in two weeks.
However, they never returned from there. The grandmother, Susan Caruana, and Alex Batty's legal guardian, had hypothesized that the two had run away with the child to join a cult and pursue an alternative lifestyle.
Although he did not show any official document to the gendarmes, the boy, now 17 years old, independently gave his identity. His face and story correspond in every way to that of the British kidnapped in 2017. This Thursday the public prosecutor of Toulouse confirmed that he is indeed Alex Batty.