A malnourished nine-year-old boy was rescued after being locked in his father’s van since 2024 in eastern France, a prosecutor said.
A neighbour alerted police to “sounds of a child” coming from a vehicle in the village of Hagenbach, near the borders of Switzerland and Germany.
After forcing the van open on Monday, officers found a child “lying in a foetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on top of a mound of trash and near excrement”, the prosecutor, Nicolas Heitz, said.
He added the child was malnourished and could no longer walk because he had been sitting down for so long.
His 43-year-old father told police he had kept the boy in the utility vehicle since November 2024 to protect him from his 37-year-old partner who “wanted to put the child in psychiatric care”, the prosecutor said.
The couple lived in a block of flats with the boy’s siblings, his 12-year-old sister and 10-year-old half-sister.
The boy told police his father brought him food twice a day and left him bottles of water, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
He said he had to urinate in plastic bottles and defecate in bin bags, adding the last time he had a shower was at the end of 2024.
According to the father, his partner did not know the boy was in the van.
The man has been charged with the “sequestration and arbitrary detention of a minor”, as well as depriving him of proper food and medical care, and has been remanded in custody.
His partner has been charged with “non-assistance to a minor in danger” and “non-denunciation of mistreatment of a minor” and has been granted conditional bail.
The three children have been placed in temporary care pending the decision of a children’s court judge.
Neighbours told police that the boy seemed to have disappeared suddenly at the end of 2024, but they understood from the couple that he had been placed in care.
Some local residents said they heard noises occasionally emanating from the van, but had been told it was a cat.
One neighbour, named Danielle, described the situation as “truly devastating”, Sky News reported.
She said: “We don’t understand it. It’s horrific, there are no words.
“I never once noticed anything, never heard anything … It feels like we’re living in a movie or a dream, and we keep thinking, ‘Tomorrow I’ll wake up, and maybe it’s not real.’ We just can’t comprehend it.”
