“Pale and clearly malnourished” – this is how the boy who lived locked in the bag of a van was rescued. The father admitted the practices and explained that he intended to protect his son from the woman.
The most recent case that is shocking France (and the world) is that of a child who lived for more than a year in the trunk of a van.
The 9-year-old boy was trapped by his 43-year-old father in the courtyard of a house in Hagenbacha small town with 800 inhabitants in the northwest of France, where the child’s father, his wife (37 years old) and two daughters (aged 10 and 12 years old) lived.
According to AFP, the victim was found naked, lying on a pile of rubbish and close to excrement, after neighborhood reported “children’s noises” coming from that courtyard.
When rescued, he was “pale, clearly malnourished” and dirty. I hadn’t taken a shower since 2024 and I relieved myself in plastic bottles and garbage bags. Furthermore, couldn’t walk for sitting so long.
O father, who was in pre-trial detention, admitted the practicesarguing that I wanted to protect my son of the woman who wanted to admit him to a psychiatric hospital. She said that in May 2025 she let the boy get out of the van and access the apartment, as the rest of the family was on vacation.
However, according to the French Public Prosecutor’s Office, cited by , no examination detected possible psychiatric problems in the child.
A woman denied being an accomplice of the kidnapping, but was charged with several crimes, including mistreatment by omission. The three minors are currently in the care of authorities.
Neighbors, cited by AFP, say they had already noticed that the child “disappeared from one day to the next”. The victim attended school until the 2023/24 school year – when the family indicated that he would be educated differently.
