A boy held hostage in a van by his own father for more than a year has revealed the real culprit behind his captivity, describing him as his “worst enemy”.
The nine-year-old boy was found naked, malnourished and unable to walk, after being trapped in cramped conditions for several months.
In late 2024, when he was just seven years old, his father locked him in a van.
Police found the child a year later when a neighbor reported hearing “a child’s voice” coming from a utility truck.
He said the boy was found “in a fetal position, naked, covered with a blanket on a garbage heap, close to human excrement” when he was rescued from the van on April 6 in Hagenbach, a village in northeastern France.
In interviews with detectives, the boy blamed his stepmother for neglecting his father because she wanted him out of her life.
He called her his “worst enemy” and “a despicable woman”.
According to the boy, his stepmother wanted to get rid of him by sending him to a psychiatric hospital in September 2024.
The boy said his father had “no choice” but to lock him in his van to prevent him from being sent away.
Prosecutor Nicholas Heitz told a news conference yesterday that inside the van, the child had “nothing else except some clothes and some empty bottles to urinate in”.
The boy also said that his last bath was in 2024, and he did not have a toothbrush or clean clothes.
The boy’s 43-year-old father has confessed to the crime but the 37-year-old stepmother denies everything.
Friends and family said they did not look for the boy because the father had told them he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
But the boy had no history of mental health problems, and had reportedly achieved good grades in school before being locked in the van.
