A 43-year-old man was charged in France with the kidnapping of his son nine yearswhom he had locked in a van for over a year. The child was found on April 6 naked, malnourished and in fetal position inside the vehicle, parked in the courtyard of a housing complex in Hagenbach, a town of about 800 inhabitants in the northeast of the country, near the borders with Switzerland and Germany.
The alert came from a neighbor who heard «child noises» coming from a van parked in a private yard. Upon forcing the vehicle to open, the gendarmes found the minor «lying in a fetal position, naked, covered with a blanket on a pile of garbage and near excrement,» according to a statement from the Mulhouse prosecutor, Nicolas Heitz.
«Due to the prolonged sitting position,» the child was «pale and evidently malnourished» and could no longer walk, Heitz said. The minor received immediate attention at the Mulhouse hospital.
The father admitted to investigators that he locked his son in the truck in November 2024 with the argument of protecting him from his partner, who wanted to admit him to a psychiatric hospital. The boy was seven years old at the time.
«To protect him because his partner wanted him admitted to a psychiatric center»declared the man, according to the prosecutor.
The harsh reality of the child: surviving in a van
The minor himself told the investigators that his father’s partner «no longer wanted him in the apartment and wanted him to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital»and that his father had locked him in the van «so as not to intern him.»
The boy also acknowledged that he had «big problems» with the woman and considered that his father «had no other option» than to lock him up.
The boy claimed not to have showered since the end of 2024. He had a bundle of clothes inside the vehicle, he had to urinate in plastic bottles and relieve himself in garbage bags. The prosecutor pointed out that there is «no medical element» that proves the minor’s psychiatric problems before his disappearance, and that the boy had good grades at school.
The minor attended school until the 2023-2024 school year in Mulhouse. The educational institution «archived its file» after receiving notice from the family that the child would be enrolled in school in another way. Neighbors and witnesses questioned by investigators agreed that The boy «disappeared overnight.»
Friends and family told authorities they believed he was in a psychiatric institution; his teachers were informed that he had transferred to another school.
The father lived with his 37-year-old partner and two girls – one of his daughters, aged 12, and another of hers, aged 10 – in the apartment next to the place where the child remained. The man stated that he allowed the minor to leave the van in May 2025 and access the apartment in the middle of that year, when the rest of the family was on vacation. The man is in preventive detention.
The man’s partner – who is not the child’s mother – also faces preliminary charges, including failure to provide assistance to a minor in danger, failure to report abuse and alleged sexual assault.
The woman denied all the accusations and was released under judicial supervision. According to the father, she suspected something, but did not know that the child was locked in the vehicle.
The authorities took the three minors involved in the case under their provisional guardianship. The prosecution is investigating whether other people were aware of the child’s situation during the time he was locked up. Prosecutor Heitz declined to comment further while the investigation remains open.
With information from AFP and AP.
