Alex Batty contacts mother after 2023 return, ending silence

alex batty has contacted his mother for the first time since returning to the UK in 2023, a new step in a case that began when he was declared missing at 11 after a holiday in Spain in 2017. The contact comes after years in which he said he lived off-grid, without school, and in one period in a tent eating one meal a day.

Batty, now 20, said in a interview that his relationship with Melanie remains difficult. “My relationship with my mum, it's such a complicated thing,” he said, adding: “I'm annoyed at what she did... the experiences I missed out on and my lack of education.”

Spain and France

The case began in September 2017, when Susan let Melanie take Batty on holiday to Marbella and he never returned. Susan contacted the police in the UK after he went missing, and a widespread media appeal followed. Batty, Melanie and David could not be found after the disappearance, and the family later moved to France.

Batty said Melanie was not his legal guardian and that she was heavily influenced by conspiracy theories. He said Melanie told him to throw away his passport. He and his mother lived part of the time off-grid, and he did not attend school while living with her.

Off-grid years

Batty’s account of the missing years adds detail to what happened away from the UK. He said he lived in a tent at one point, sometimes ate just one meal a day and did manual labour for money. For readers trying to understand the practical stakes of the case, that means the missing-child file was not only about where he was, but about years of missed education and isolated living conditions.

In the Three documentary, Batty retraced his years in isolation, visiting people in small towns and villages across Spain and France. He said the experience “opened up my eyes,” but he also worried that learning how others perceived what happened could “villainise” his mother. Batty confronted some of the people he met while missing about why they did not contact services to help him; he said some people did alert authorities in France, but help never came.

Alex Batty and Melanie

Batty’s contact with Melanie comes after he recently started a family of his own and became a father to a baby girl. That new role sits beside the return of an old one: adult son, speaking publicly, and revisiting the years that shaped his life before and after the 2023 return to the UK.

The immediate development now is personal rather than procedural. Batty has reopened contact with the mother at the center of the abduction case, and he has already put on the record the contradiction he is living with: the reunion of a family link, and the anger tied to what he says he lost. His interview and documentary work suggest he is still processing the same years the public first learned his name, but from the vantage point of adulthood.