A nine-year-old boy has been rescued after being locked in his father’s utility van in France since 2024.
Police were alerted by a neighbour to ‘sounds of a child’ coming from a van on Monday in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders of Switzerland and Germany, according to a statement from prosecutor Nicolas Heitz on Saturday.
After forcing the van open, they found a child ‘lying in a foetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement’.
The child was clearly malnourished and could no longer walk because he had been in a seated position for so long, the local prosecutor said.
The boy’s father told investigators that he put the child in the van in November 2024, when he was seven, ‘to protect him’ because his partner wanted to send the boy to a psychiatric hospital.
The prosecutor said there was no medical record that the boy had any psychiatric problems before he disappeared, and he had had good grades in school.
The boy told investigators he had ‘big difficulties’ with his father’s partner, and thought his father ‘had no choice’ but to lock him up. He said he had not showered since 2024.
The child has been taken to hospital, while his father was detained on charges including preliminary kidnapping. He is being kept in custody.
A building in Hagenbach where a nine-year-old boy was rescued this week after living locked in his father’s utility van since 2024
The terrace at the first level of a residential building where which a boy was discovered in the courtyard naked and malnourished on a pile of rubbish in a van
A van is seen parked outside the property in Hagenbach where the malnourished boy was found by police
His partner denied knowing the boy was in the van, according to the prosecutor.
She was handed preliminary charges, including failure to help a minor in danger, and released under judicial supervision.
The boy’s 12-year-old sister and the 10-year-old daughter of his father’s partner were put in the care of social services.
The prosecutor’s office is investigating whether others were aware of the locked-up boy.
Friends and family told investigators they thought the boy was in a psychiatric institution. His teachers were told he had transferred to a different school, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Authorities did not release the names of the boy or family members.
Residents of the village reached expressed shock on Saturday at what happened and said they were unaware of the boy’s whereabouts, but did not want to discuss details.