Alex Batty relives moment he knew he had to escape from mum's commune lifestyle
Alex Batty recalled the exact moment the teen realised he had to flee from his mum’s strange commune and nomadic lifestyle.
The now 17-year-old, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, vanished when he was just 11, after his mum, Melanie Batty, 37, and grandfather, David Batty, 58, "kidnapped" with him after going on a pre-planned holiday in 2017. Both adults were prohibited from being with the boy at the time, because of domestic difficulties.
When they never returned back from Marbella after two weeks, police launched an inquiry. He was taken to live in a "spiritual community" first in Morocco and later in the Pyrenees before eventually turning up in France. Then, last month, on December 13, the teenager turned up out of the blue along a rural road in Quillan, France, where he was picked up by part-time delivery driver Fabien Accidini.
Alex, and his grandmother Susan Caruana have given their first TV interview since he returned home to celebrate Christmas in the UK once more. Speaking to Good Morning Britain, the teen said he didn’t want his mum and grandad to face jail amid ongoing investigations into his disappearance. He previously admitted to lying to police and misleading them, telling them that grandad David had died.
He also lied to them, claiming he had hiked for four days through the mountains before he was found and outlined in the interview how he altered his walking path to claim he had been going for far longer than he really had, to try and throw authorities off the trail. Now he has revealed the moment when he realised he had to leave.
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He said: "We stayed in a lot of caravans and a lot of houses, always up mountains and hours away from any village or anything like that. One day I just thought, okay I can’t take this any more. I knew that everything was kind of already in place for them to leave where we were, so if I were to have left they would be gone by the time the police arrived."
Alex Batty and his grandmother Susan appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain (ITV)Susan also told the show: "I used to think about Alex every single day and that was painful. But now I won't think that way anymore." She also shared that she did not want his mother or grandfather to face prison over his disappearance.
She said: "I don't want them to go to prison, that's the last thing that I want." Alex replied: "That's why I didn't come home sooner. All I worried about was them getting locked up."
Susan, Alex’s official guardian, previously said that her husband and daughter had taken Alex into an "alternative lifestyle". She said: "They didn't want [Alex] to go to school, they don't believe in mainstream school."
Alex celebrated Christmas back with his grandmother, getting his wish of 24 cans of Irn Bru and a couple of family-sized bags of crisps. Alex did not have any proper schooling during his time moving around Europe and is now preparing to start college in January. The whereabouts of Alex’s mum and grandad are unknown after she left a rented house in the village of Villefort in France.
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