2024-01-03 14:54:27
A few days before Christmas, images of his return home went around the world. Six years after his disappearance and a few weeks after his return to the care of his grandmother in England, Alex Batty, 17, spoke for the first time this Wednesday morning to the ITV channel. On the set of “Good Morning Britain,” the British teenager, found in southwest France in December, explained why he ran away and his guilt at the idea that his mother and grandfather can be condemned for having kidnapped him.
In 2017, while under the guardianship of his English maternal grandmother, Alex Batty disappeared in the company of his mother Melanie Batty and his grandfather David Batty. The young man would have continued to grow up with them in a traveling spiritual community which would have traveled through Spain, Morocco, Aude, the Pyrenees and Ariège for several years.
Alex Batty who was found in France after going missing for six years, has told GMB that he does not want his mother and grandfather to get into trouble over his disappearance.
He vanished when he was 11 after travelling to Spain with them. pic.twitter.com/X3rvkGkIVW
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) January 3, 2024
Accompanied by Susan Caruana, his grandmother, the teenager recounted the boredom and loneliness of nomadic life. “In six years, I’ve only had one friend my age. Everyone else was much older than me. So I’m very comfortable talking to adults, but with people my age, it’s complicated,” he regrets.
“We stayed in many caravans and houses (…) always in the mountains, hours from the villages. One day, I just said to myself, Okay, I can’t take this anymore,” he says. “I started thinking about returning to England when I was 14. I told my mother and grandfather for the first time when I was 16,” he recalls. For his mother, “it was an absolute no on his part”. But his grandfather seems more open: “On my grandfather’s part, it was a question of I want to do what’s best for my life, and he completely understood that. »
Melanie Batty, a “great person” who was never a “terrible mother”
This is what would have stopped the young man from fleeing earlier: “All that worried me was seeing them locked up. » So, Alex Batty waits for the preparations for an upcoming transhumance of his loved ones to be completed and decides: “I knew that everyone was ready to leave the place where we were, and that if the police arrived they would have already left. »
The day he left, the young man left a note for his mother and grandfather on the kitchen table. He would have written that he understood that they had made this decision (to remove him) out of love for him. According to Alex Batty, David, his grandfather presumed dead, is in fact alive. Just like his mother, Melanie Batty, whom the teenager describes as a “great person” whom he loves but who was never a “terrible mother”. Suspected for a time of having traveled to northern Europe in recent weeks, the mother is still in the South-West, British investigators estimate.
For his part, Alex Batty considers the idea of one day seeing his mother and grandfather unlikely…
Back in Oldham, near Manchester (England), where he found his grandmother’s house, the teenager celebrated the holidays with the woman who had made many calls for help over the years. A real change for the young man. “When I was gone, we never really celebrated Christmas because we were always moving,” he rejoices. It’s so nice to lie in bed at night and wake up in the same place in the morning. »
VIDEO. Fabien, the deliveryman who crossed paths with Alex Batty, missing since 2017
Also interviewed, Susan Caruana, the grandmother, confides having been “completely and totally betrayed” and “left heartbroken” by her daughter and her ex-husband. But she does not wish them the worst and says she wants to forgive them: “I don’t want them to go to prison, that’s the last thing I want. »
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