MULHOUSE.- A man of 43 years He was detained after keeping his nine-year-old son locked in a van for 16 months. The event occurred in Hagenbacha town of barely 800 inhabitants located in the southeast of France. The minor was found on Monday by local police thanks to a neighbor who alerted the authorities because of “child noises” coming from the vehicle.
The Police arrested the man, whose identity was not revealed, who admitted to having kept his son kidnapped and without care. The child was found in “fetal position, naked, covered with a blanket and surrounded by garbage and excrement.”according to the French newspaper Le Mondeciting Nicolas Heitzthe prosecutor of the municipality of Mulhouse, 20 kilometers from Hagenbach.
The van was found parked in the courtyard of a residential property during the police search. The authorities stated that the young man “he was pale and malnourished“, so he was immediately transferred to Mulhouse Hospital, where he was hospitalized and under medical treatment.
Based on the reconstruction that the French media made of the statements of Heitzthe 43-year-old man claimed to have put his son inside the van since November 2024 “to protect it”.
According to the father, his current partner – who is not the child’s mother -, a 37-year-old woman, wanted to commit the minor to a psychiatric hospital. “But no medical evidence supported that the child has psychiatric problems,” the prosecutor clarified.
In addition to both adults, the minor lived with his sisters: one 10 years old and the other 12 years old. After making his statements before the court, the man was arrested.
Also from the prosecutor’s story Heitz, Le Monde recorded what the minor said to the authorities. “My dad’s partner no longer wanted me in the apartment and wanted to admit me to a psychiatric hospital. But my dad locked me up to avoid that“, said the minor.
The ongoing investigation showed that the minor recorded his last shower at the end of 2024. Inside the vehicle there were a lot of clothes and I had plastic bottles to urinate in and garbage bags to defecate in..
“Four or five years ago we lived with our father, because our mother has psychological problems“, said the 12-year-old girl, who explained that her brother “was enrolled in the first grade of primary school in Mulhouse until the 2023-2024 school year.”
Among the testimonies collected by Le Mondeseveral of the family’s neighbors agreed with the same sentiment: “The boy disappeared overnight”.
As confirmed Le Mondethe man was accused of “arrest, kidnapping, improper retention or arbitrary detention of minors under 15 years of age and deprivation of care or food that compromised the health of a minor under 15 years of age” by an ascendant.
At the same time, the father’s partner was also accused of “not providing assistance to a minor under 15 years of age in danger,” and of not reporting “mistreatment, deprivation, assault or sexual abuse,” as stated by the magistrate in a statement.
