A nine-year-old boy has been rescued after living locked in his father\u2019s utility van in eastern France since 2024, according to the local prosecutor. <\/p>\n
The child has been hospitalised, and his father detained.<\/p>\n
Police were alerted by a neighbour to the \u201csounds of a child” coming from a van on Tuesday in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders with Switzerland and Germany, according to a statement overnight from prosecutor Nicolas Heitz.<\/p>\n
After forcing the van open, officers found the child \u201clying in a fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement,\u2033 Heitz said. <\/p>\n
The boy was clearly malnourished and could no longer walk after being in a seated position for so long, according to the statement.<\/p>\n
The boy\u2019s father told investigators that he put the child in the truck in November 2024 \u201cto protect him\u201d because his partner wanted to send the then seven-year-old to a psychiatric hospital, the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n
Heitz said there was no medical record that the boy had any psychiatric problems before he disappeared and that he had had good grades in school.<\/p>\n
The boy told investigators that he had \u201cbig difficulties” with his father’s partner and thought his father \u201chad no choice\u201d but to lock him up, according to the prosecutor. <\/p>\n
He said he hadn\u2019t showered since 2024.<\/p>\n
The father was handed preliminary kidnapping and other charges and kept in custody. <\/p>\n
His partner denied knowledge that the boy was in the van, according to the prosecutor. <\/p>\n
She was handed preliminary charges, including for failure to help a minor in danger, and released under judicial supervision.<\/p>\n
The boy\u2019s 12-year-old sister and the 10-year-old daughter of his father\u2019s partner were placed in the care of social services.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor\u2019s office is investigating whether others were aware of the boy’s detention.<\/p>\n
Friends and family told investigators they thought the boy was in a psychiatric institution. <\/p>\n
His teachers were told he had transferred to a different school, according to the prosecutor’s office.<\/p>\n
The authorities have not released the names of the victim or his relatives.<\/p>\n
Hagenbach residents contacted by The Associated Press expressed shock on Saturday over the cases and said they were unaware of the boy’s whereabouts, but didn’t want to discuss details.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor declined to comment further to AP pending further investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nine-year-old boy has been rescued after living locked in his father\u2019s utility van in eastern France since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":{"0":"post-375213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-crime-and-justice","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-uk-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}