French authorities have found a 17-year-old boy from Oldham in England who went missing from Spain in 2017. Alex Batty was discovered in the town of Revel, east of Toulouse, in good health. He had been missing for six years. His mother and grandfather, who do not have parental guardianship of Alex, have not been located but remain wanted in connection with his disappearance. A police source explained that Alex had been taken to a police station by a concerned motorist who had spotted him walking along a road in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
The boy said he had been in France for two years, the police source said, and added that he bore a resemblance to the last known picture of Alex. His grandmother, Susan Caruana, who is his legal guardian, had believed Alex’s mother and grandfather had taken him to live with a spiritual community in Morocco. She had said at the time they were seeking an alternative lifestyle and did not want Alex to go to school. Melanie and David Batty had left Greater Manchester with Alex for Marbella in Spain on 30th September 2017 and he was last seen at the Port of Malaga on 8th October, the day they were expected to return.
It is not clear what has happened to Alex in the intervening years. A local journalist told the BBC a delivery driver had spotted the boy walking along the road carrying a backpack and skateboard and, feeling sorry for him, picked him up. “They spent three hours together in the car, and the boy told his story,” Remi Buhagiar of La Depeche newspaper said. “He said he’d been living in a kind of itinerant commune. He wasn’t under any compulsion but he said he found his mother a bit weird and decided he didn’t want this kind of life, and that he wanted to set his own path – that’s why he decided to leave,” he added.
Alex’s grandmother said that she was happy he had been found and looked forward to being reunited with him. A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said that the case was “a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further enquiries as well as putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place.” The area in the foothills of the Pyrenees is known for attracting people in search of alternative lifestyles. The boy is currently being looked after by social services, awaiting the arrival of British police and consular staff who are on their way to bring him back to England
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