Alex Batty was kidnapped by his mum aged 11 - now he's a father and ready to speak to her again

A man kidnapped by his mum aged 11 and taken to live off-grid across Europe has contacted her for the first time since his return to the UK in 2023. Alex Batty , now 20, has also revealed he has become father to a baby girl as he settles back into a normal life. He was declared missing by grandmother Susan Caruana in 2017 after h is mother and grandfather abducted him while on holiday in Spain, before moving to France. Mum, Melanie, who was not his legal guardian and was heavily influenced by conspiracy theories, told him to throw away his passport. They then lived part of the time off-grid while he did not attend school. In a new BBC documentary, Kidnapped By My Mum, Alex, tells the full story of what happened and retraces the route of his movements across Spain and France. He meets up with those who remembered him and his family, while his loving grandmother also speaks about the anguish of not knowing if she would ever see him again. In the show Alex speaks of his years in isolation, which at one point saw him living in a tent, sometimes eating just one meal a day and carrying out manual labour for money. By retracing his journey he said he hoped to understand more about his mother and why she did what she did. Learning how others perceived their situation, he said he was worried it could “villainise” her. Alex says: “My relationship with my mum, it's such a complicated thing, I’m annoyed at what she did... the experiences I missed out on and my lack of education,” but speaking to people he met in small towns and villages across Spain and France had “opened up my eyes”. Alex, who recently started a family of his own after becoming a father to a baby girl, said the experience of making the documentary led him to reach out to his mother again. In the documentary he confronted people he met about why they did not contact the authorities to help him. He also learned that some people did raise the alert in France - but help never came. Grandmother Sue said: “My daughter Melanie was a lovely kid and we were close until she started drifting away from me as a teenager. She remained close to her dad, David who I had been with for 22 years before we split up because of his excessive drinking. “When Alex was six or seven, Melanie and David started talking to various people who I would consider to be a bit out there. And she became the biggest conspiracy theorist you ever could meet.” The show tells how Melanie followed the Sovereign Citizen ideology of anti-government, anti-taxation conspiracy theories, whose aim is to withdraw from society and build their own communities. In 2014, when Alex was eight, Melanie and David took him to live at a commune in Morocco but returned after six months when they ran out of money. Shortly after, Melanie left for Bali, leaving Alex with his gran for two years. Sue said; “Melanie didn’t believe in school anymore but I did. I started to look into becoming Alex’s special guardian and she went berserk. She hated me for stealing her son. “One day in 2017 she asked if she could take him on holiday with her and David to Spain. Alex was jumping up and down with excitement saying, ‘Please, Grandma. Please let me go.’ And I ended up saying, yeah.” When they had been away for a few days Sue, from Oldham, rang Alex to ask him: “You are coming home on Saturday, aren’t you?” He asked his mum who replied: “Right, that’s it. Switch the phone off.” Sue then received a Facebook video from Melanie saying, “I will not bow down to criminals, nor condone or perpetuate corruption, nor will I give my boy up to my mum, nor the authorities..” David then announced: “It’s goodbye, Sue. Goodbye to family and friends. Alex wants to be with his mum.” Finally, Alex is filmed reading from a statement saying, “It upsets me to tell you the truth because I don’t like hurting your feelings. I want to live with my mummy and grandad. It is one million times better. Stealing me from your own daughter is not nice. “If you are not selfish and want the best for me, then please do not get anybody to look for us. Look into your heart and think what I want, not what you want. Goodbye.” Sue contacted the police in the UK and a widespread media appeal was launched, but Alex, Melanie and grandfather David could not be found. For the documentary, Alex visited the small town of Benifairó de les Valls, north of Valencia, where they hid for two months. He tells how his mum told him to throw his phone and passport in the bin, to prevent them from being traced, saying: “I felt like James Bond doing it, to be honest. I thought I was really cool.” “What they used to say is that under the law it's classified as kidnapping but it isn't kidnapping because she's my mum,” he said. To avoid being found, Alex recalls he wore hats and glasses, grew out his hair and stayed indoors most of the time as news of his disappearance spread. Over the following years they kept moving from one place to the next. In 2021 they moved to the small village of Camps-sur-l’Agly, in the French Pyrenees. It was in 2023 that Alex decided to leave, saying: “I started to realise that this wasn’t what I should be doing,” says Alex. “I should be at college, not stuck in a mountain in France.” He wrote his mum and grandad a letter saying he loved them and to not be mad, then snuck out in the dead of night. After walking in the Pyrenees for four days he hitched a lift with a lorry driver. After being taken to a local police station his story made headlines worldwide - before he returned to live with his grandmother in Oldham. The police abduction investigation was eventually closed. Alex says: “I spent six years just being worried the entire time, so not having to worry any more about it, really helped to put it behind me and move forward.” Alex’s mother Melanie Batty was invited to respond to the allegations in the programme, but declined. His grandfather David Batty was also contacted but didn’t respond.