Missing British Teen Found in France After 6 Years in Moroccan Community

The disappearance and sudden reappearance of Alex Batty, a 17-year-old Englishman, was the subject of a lively press conference on Friday by the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office, reports franceinfo. His parents are both lawyers. His father left the family home when he was 2 years old. Young Alex then remained with his mother and grandmother. In 2014, his mother, Mélanie Batty, decided to go to Morocco. She took her son on her adventure: two stays in a community. This trip to Morocco is not to the liking of Susan Caruana, his grandmother. She points to Mélanie’s unstable character to obtain custody of her grandson.

In 2017, a new turning point will mark Alex’s life. His grandmother authorizes his mother and grandfather to take him to Morocco. The teenager will no longer return to Great Britain. "This is why from August 10, 2017, a missing person report was issued," explains Antoine Leroy, deputy prosecutor of the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office. The teenager planned his escape after the death of his grandfather six months earlier, and his mother’s desire to go to Finland. He arrives in France, crosses the path of a student delivering medicines at 3 a.m. and contacts the gendarmes of Villefranche-de-Lauragais.

Alex told the gendarmes that he had spent two years in Morocco within a spiritual community, "moving constantly, always in large houses with about ten people present each time different, with" a mother "obsessed" with the use of solar panels. "The daily life of this group is punctuated by "work on the ego, on meditation, on the non-existence of the real world and reincarnation". A few weeks ago, Alex went to the Pyrénées-Orientales, the Aude and the Ariège the following two years.

According to the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office, the teenager will be handed over to the authorities "no later than Sunday". There is a question of helping him find his grandmother who has not seen him since 2017. Has the young man lived in sectarian communities? Only the investigation of the French justice system will be able to answer this question.