Alex Batty: Police launch investigation into alleged abduction
A criminal investigation has begun into the alleged child abduction of Alex Batty, who reappeared this month after going missing six years ago.
Officers have interviewed the now 17-year-old following his return from France, Greater Manchester Police said.
After being looked after by the French authorities, Alex met his step-grandfather at Toulouse airport on Saturday before boarding a flight to the UK, the force added.
He was taken on holiday when he was 11 and returned to the UK last weekend after being found by chiropody student Fabien Accidini near the French city of Toulouse.
The teenager, from Oldham, trekked for four days and nights across the Pyrenees, a French prosecutor said, after spending years in France and Spain with his mother and his grandfather.
His mother Melanie Batty, who does not have legal guardianship, may be in Finland, French prosecutors have said. Antoine Leroy told reporters Alex said he knew his life with his mother “had to stop” after she said she intended to move to Finland.
He is now under the legal guardianship of his grandmother, Susan Caruana, in Oldham.
Alex Batty’s grandmother, Susan Caruana, pictured in 2017
In a newspaper interview, the teenager said it felt “surreal” to be home and he still goes to sleep not expecting to wake up in England.
He went on holiday with his mother and grandfather David Batty, 59, in 2017.
He never returned and is said to have lived an “alternative” lifestyle abroad before deciding to return home.
Speaking to the Sun newspaper, the 17-year-old said he spent six years wandering around Europe with his mum and grandfather and first thought of leaving when he was 14.
“Being back with my grandma feels quite surreal,” he said. “Every time I go to sleep, I feel like I’m going to be waking up back in France. It’s not really kicked in yet that I am back in England.
“For the first few years, when I was in Spain, it was a vacation really, spending most days doing whatever I wanted, reading, drawing, going to the beach.”
He said he “started to pick up slack” at around 14, when he took up odd jobs in construction, decoration, painting walls and renovation work.
“I had a non-existent social life to be honest,” he said, adding he didn’t go to school and instead learned languages and studied maths and computing when he came across a textbook.
“And the entire six-year span, I made one friend and it was the only person really that I’d met for the entire six years that was even close to my age.”
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Speaking about his mother, who he described as “anti-government, anti-vax”, Alex said: “She’s a great person and I love her but she’s just not a great mum.
“I had an argument with my mum and I just thought I’m gonna leave because I can’t live with her.”
“I realised it wasn’t a great way to live for my future,” he added.
“Moving around. No friends, no social life. Working, working, work and not studying. That’s the life I imagined I would be leading if I were to stay with my mum.”
According to The Sun, Alex walked out of a rented house they were staying in near Chalabre, in southern France, and left a goodbye note on Monday last week.
The Sun front page
He was picked up by chiropody student Fabien Accidini near the French city of Toulouse in the early hours of Wednesday – two days later.
“He was delivering parcels so I helped him because it’s the least I could do,” Alex said.
“He let me use his phone to contact my grandma. After that he calls the police and a squad car nearby takes me to the nearest police station.”
He can now look forward to spending time with family members, friends and others he grew up with in Greater Manchester, where he was living as a young boy and police say is “where he wants to be”.
“When I got back to Manchester it was raining as usual,” he added.
“I was driven back to my gran’s house and I walked in the door and she’s in the living room. I started shaking and just gave her a massive hug.
“The house is different now but still feels the same.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
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A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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