Formal identification has confirmed that a teenager who turned up alone in France this week is Alex Batty, a British boy who went missing six years ago, allegedly abducted by his mother and grandfather when he was 11.
The now-17-year-old spoke to his grandmother via video call on Thursday night and she was sure it was him, Greater Manchester police (GMP) said.
Alex, from Oldham, was under the guardianship of his grandmother Susan Caruana when he failed to return from a holiday in Spain with his mother and grandfather in September 2017.
GMP assistant chief constable Chris Sykes told reporters on Friday: “The young man and Alex’s grandmother spoke on a video call last night and, whilst she is content that this is indeed Alex, we obviously have further checks to do when he returns to the United Kingdom.”
Formal identification took place on Thursday evening and officers had confirmed the teenager was Alex, GMP said in a statement.
Asked what “further checks” they needed to do, a GMP spokesperson said: “We need to speak to him and see him in person when he is back in the country.”
Police would continue working with the Foreign Office to provide travel documents for Alex’s safe return to the UK, and he would arrive home “this weekend or early next week”, the spokesperson said.
Alex left the UK on 30 September 2017 for a family holiday in Spain with his then 43-year-old mother, Melanie Batty, and her father, David Batty, who was then 64.
He was due to return to England on Sunday 8 October 2017 but never did. An investigation was launched but despite extensive inquiries, and assistance from Spanish authorities, Alex remained missing – only to turn up in southern France on Wednesday this week when he was picked up by a delivery driver.
After his disappearance, Caruana said she believed her ex-partner and her daughter had run away with the boy because they wanted him to have “an alternative lifestyle”.
On Thursday, the French newspaper La Dépêche reported that officials had confirmed Batty, now 17, had turned up in the town of Revel, in southern France.
He used a motorist’s phone to message his grandmother in the UK via social media and wrote: “I love you, I want to come home,” the BBC reported.
On Thursday night, Alex’s aunt Maureen Batty, 73, from Nelson in Lancashire told the Mirror: “I am glad he has been found because we had no idea about where he has been for the last six or seven years. I am relieved that he is safe. He is coming home next week.
“I don’t know where his mother or grandad are and they are not pressing Alex about it yet. Alex hasn’t had any education while out there, so we don’t know what he’ll be like when he comes home. It has affected me. Alex has had it rough. It is a mess.
“I’ve been told that Alex said that he had escaped and he didn’t want to lead that lifestyle. So he is thinking straight on those lines. I just want to know the truth about what’s gone on. He is safe now.”
Sykes said: “Our main priority now is to see Alex returned home to his family in the UK and our investigation team are working around the clock with partner agencies and the French authorities to ensure they are all fully supported.
“Alex and his family remain our focus and we still have some work to do in establishing the full circumstances surrounding his disappearance and where he has been in all those years.
“I can only imagine the emotions they have experienced as a family throughout this ordeal.”
