'Kidnapped' Alex Batty admits he still doesn't want his mum and grandad caught

11 February 2024 , 23:02

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Alex Batty says his mum did what she did "out of love" (Image: Andy Stenning/Sunday Mirror)

Long lost Alex Batty still hopes his mum and grandad don't get caught by police after taking him abroad.

The 17-year-old British teenager opened up about his life back in the UK after six years on the run in Europe, ahead of his 18th birthday on Tuesday. He vanished in 2017 after going on holiday with his mum and grandad, Melanie and David Batty, when he was 11.

They had travelled for a pre-agreed week-long holiday to Marbella in Spain and were last seen at the Port of Malaga on 8 October that year. Alex lived "an off-the-grid life" with them in Morocco, Spain, and then in southwest France.

Now back in the UK, Alex sat down with the Mirror and said: “Mum did what she did out of love. It’s what she thought was best and that’s all you can really do, isn’t it? She and my grandad did it with the best intentions. I know they’re not going to get in contact. They’re definitely not going to risk it. If they get in contact, it’ll be when they’re 100% sure they’re all right. They won’t rush it for my birthday.

Alex now lives with his gran Susan (Andy Stenning/Sunday Mirror)

“I hope the police don’t find them. I love them both but if I don’t see them again it’s not a big deal. You can love someone and not talk to them. Mum probably wants to see me but she can’t, can she? She will probably be angry that I left. I think she’ll be angry that I didn’t listen to her. If I could speak to them both now, I would just say, ‘I hope you’re all right’ and tell them I’m all right.”

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Both Melanie and David are still on the run following his shock reappearance last year. Alex finally escaped life on the road on December 13, after having an argument with his mum and leaving the isolated farmhouse in the French Pyrenees where they were living. He handed himself in at a police station near Toulouse, 70 miles north, having been picked up by a delivery driver while wandering a country road near Chalabre at 3am. He had also been spotted at a French diner.

He now shares a home with gran Susan Caruana, 68 – Melanie’s mum and David’s ex-wife – in Oldham, Greater ­Manchester. He has started a computer programming course and toasted his return to the UK with a big night out. Like many a typical British ­teenager, Alex is now planning on getting his first tattoo. He said: “I’m thinking of getting a rose tattooed under my left ear. But I might get something in a more hidden area for job purposes.”

Adjusting to life around people his age has proved difficult however, after six years of isolation. Alex continued: “I’ve found it difficult since I got back talking to people my age. I’ve been around adults since I was 11 and spent all my time talking to them, so I call people my own age ‘kids’. It’s engraved in me. It still doesn’t feel real that I’m back. It’s still not really sunk in. I think it’ll probably hit me sometime soon, but it hasn’t yet. He said: “We lived in 15 different places during the six years. I can remember all of them. We started off in Spain, staying around the Valencia region for three years. We were in a village called ­Villalonga in the Gandia region. It was a nice village.

“Then we moved to the Arias region for about two and a half years and stayed at different campsites and houses. Our last place was the farmhouse in La Bastide. It was very isolated and we had no car, so it was difficult.” During his six years away, he says he made just one friend his own age, a Spanish girl he met in a café. He’s now plotting a summer holiday to go partying with her and added: “When we were moving around I wasn’t really aware of much in the outside world.

“We were in the ­mountains a lot, so it was hard to have internet and when we did it was usually very bad. The last farmhouse we were in had decent internet, so I’d watch YouTube, but I didn’t do social media and I’d never take photos of myself [or] of my mum or grandad because we always worried about being found."

Patrick Hill