French man charged with keeping nine-year-old son locked in van since 2024

Police rescued boy after neighbour reported sounds of a child coming from vehicle in Hagenbach in eastern France 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 bottle