Gendarmes discovered a naked and malnourished nine-year-old boy in a van in Hagenbach, southern Alsace, on Monday. The boy's 43-year-old father and 37-year-old partner have been charged with sequestration and deprivation of care. The child recounts over a year of ordeal.
Gendarmes in Hagenbach, a small Haut-Rhin commune of 800 residents, responded Monday after a resident reported hearing "child noises" from a van parked in a private courtyard. They found the nine-year-old boy "curled in fetal position, naked, covered by a blanket on a pile of waste near excrement," pale and malnourished, unable to walk due to prolonged sitting, according to Mulhouse prosecutor Nicolas Heitz.
The child was hospitalized in Mulhouse. He told investigators his father's partner, who did not want him in the apartment and sought his psychiatric institutionalization, led to his confinement in the van end of 2024 at age seven. The father admitted the acts, claiming it protected him, with no medical evidence of the child's psychiatric issues. The boy's last shower was end of 2024; he urinated in bottles and used trash bags for waste.
The 43-year-old electrician father lived with his 37-year-old partner and two girls aged 12 and 10 in an apartment in an old farmhouse since early 2024. He installed a camera on the van and gave the boy a phone, allowing limited outings until May 2025. The child had attended CP school in Mulhouse until 2023-2024 before vanishing.
The father was jailed for kidnapping, sequestration, and deprivation of care to a minor. His partner, under judicial supervision, faces charges of non-assistance and non-reporting; she denies involvement. The three children were placed in care; the boy is "safe" in hospital, the prosecutor said.
