April 11 (UPI) -- French authorities arrested a man and his partner after discovering the man's nine-year-old son in a van, which he'd been forced to live in since 2024.
Police said the boy was found in the vehicle amid a pile of trash, naked and lying in the fetal position when they opened the van doors after a neighbor said they heard "the sounds of a child" from inside it, The Guardian and Fox News reported.
A prosecutor, Nicolas Heitz, told reporters that police were called to a French village called Hagenbach, located near the borders of Switzerland and Germany, and that the boy was malnourished and could not walk because he'd been forced to stay seated for at least a year-and-a-half.
His 43-year-old father, whose name has not been released, told police that he'd locked the boy in the van to prevent his partner from placing the nine-year-old in a psychiatric treatment facility.
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