Alex Batty was living with his legal guardian, his grandmother, when his mother took him to France allegedly to disconnect from a mainstream lifestyle. Photo / Greater Manchester Police, PA
Alex Batty was living with his legal guardian, his grandmother, when his mother took him to France allegedly to disconnect from a mainstream lifestyle. Photo / Greater Manchester Police, PA
Nestled in the remote mountain passes of the Pyrenees, away from prying eyes, live nomadic communes of people who, for one reason or another, have decided to leave the modern world behind.
Among them, it has now become clear, was Melanie Batty, a one-time law student from Oldham, Greater Manchester, and her son, Alex.
On Wednesday, Alex, 17, emerged from the mountains after hiking for days, having been “kidnapped” on a family holiday in Spain by his mother and grandfather, Dave Batty, six years earlier.
He told a chiropractic student who discovered him wandering beside a road, dehydrated but carrying a skateboard under his arm, that his mother was “a little crazy”.
He insisted, however, that she had never imprisoned him and he could always “leave when he wanted”. He said he now wanted to be an engineer.
Alex is due to return to the UK in the coming days.
In a statement issued after his disappearance, Greater Manchester Police said his mother and grandfather were wanted in connection with his abduction.
Susan Caruana, his grandmother and legal guardian, has spent years appealing for the safe return of her grandson ever since he first disappeared in 2017.
In an interview from 2018, shortly after the trio vanished, Caruana said her husband and daughter had undergone a “transformation”, before they left the UK.
Alex, pictured as a child, is due to return to the UK in the coming days.
She described how her daughter had been a rebellious teenager, who went to college and got a law degree but struggled to find settled employment.
She said that when Alex was born in 2006 she developed a “close bond” with him and loaned her daughter money to care for him but she “just blew the lot”.
Around the same time her now ex-husband began receiving therapy for health issues.
“Afterwards he began acting strangely. He became very spiritual. He didn’t believe in working any more and so he fell behind with his mortgage and bills and the bailiffs were called in.
“Melanie became caught up with his new lifestyle too and she got involved with a cult. She began travelling abroad, with Alex. Their lives were chaotic. Melanie didn’t believe in school or education. I was really worried about them.”
In 2014, Melanie took Alex, then aged 8, to live in a commune in Morocco. Her father soon followed.
Caruana said she was “devastated” after her grandson left and from pictures on Facebook she could see the conditions he was living in were terrible.
Shortly afterwards, she claimed her daughter went to Bali with a new boyfriend, leaving Alex behind.
“I was panic-stricken and I paid for a flight home for him.”
Mid-way through, however, Alex called her to tell her he was on the beach.
In the background she heard her daughter shouting at him “no more contact”.
A video message from Melanie and David followed shortly after. They said Alex would not be returning to the UK.
Caruana said: “The reason I believe they have done this is because basically my lifestyle, my belief systems, are not what they agree with – just simply living day to day, how normal people do.
“They didn’t want him to go to school, they don’t believe in mainstream school.”
He told French authorities that his grandfather passed away six months ago, and his mother wanted him to go to Finland with her.
Antoine Leroy, deputy prosecutor, told reporters: “When his mother indicated that she was going to leave with him … this young man understood that this had to stop.”
The “itinerant community” Alex lived in was made up of about 10 people, had no school and was cut-off from mainstream society.
They carried solar panels with them wherever they went and lived by foraging off the land.
The Pyrenean Aude and the neighbouring Ariege areas they moved around are awash with New Age types, many of whom live off-grid and sell their wares in numerous local markets.
A large weekly market takes place every Saturday morning in the town of Revel in the black mountain area, where Alex, now 17, had turned up this week after he was dropped off by a delivery driver who had picked him up at 2am by the side of the road.
However, it is thought that the teenager had actually been living nearer Quillan, higher up towards the Pyrenees.
Quillan is just 15km from Bugarach which lies near a table-top mountain.
In 2012, Bugarach hit international headlines amid a huge, global internet conspiracy theory suggesting this “doomsday village”, with its curious “upside down” peak offered protection against the end of the world supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar for approximately 11.21GMT on December 21 that year.
Alex Batty's mother was accused of kidnapping her own son in 2017 and starting a new life with the then 11-year-old.
The internet abounds with tales of the late president Francois Mitterrand being curiously heliported onto the peak, of mysterious digs conducted by the Nazis and later Mossad, the Israeli secret services.
Little is known of the beliefs of the spiritual community to which Alex, his mother and grandfather belonged.
French prosecutors said the group did “work on the ego” and meditation, with a focus on reincarnation.
They had been living in tents and caravans pitched in the wilderness in recent weeks, according to La Depeche newspaper.
Courts ‘steal children for profit’
On David Batty’s Facebook, he posted pictures about the Matrix and how the Government is “destroying our lives”. He also wrote that “secret courts” in the UK are “being used to steal children for profit”.
Despite family claims he had been “brainwashed”, Fabio Accidini, who found the teenager, said Alex seemed to be a fairly normal teenage boy.
“He was quite tall and blonde, and dressed in black jeans, a white sweater and a backpack,” said Accidini.
“He also carried a skateboard under his arm and a flashlight.”
But Simone Risch, president of Infos Sectes in Toulouse, who is used to hearing the testimonies of people under the influence of sects, said it would take time for Alex to process his experiences.
