After months of waiting, the results were positive. Alexandr, a 16-year-old Ukrainian boy whose disappearance was reported in Rouen last June, is in France and is in good health, the Rouen prosecutor’s office said in a press release issued late Thursday. The teenager was forcibly taken by his mother and stepfather to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
The court provided many details about this sordid affair. On June 3, Alexandr left his home, where he had been placed on the orders of a juvenile judge, to attend BJJ (Brazilian Ju-Jitsu) training in the city center of Rouen. Since then, he has not been heard from and the home has alerted the police.
A long journey
It turned out that the teenager was forcibly taken by his mother and stepfather to Ukraine. And this after a long journey: Ukrainian airspace closed due to the war with Russia, the pair passed through Germany then Poland before dropping Alexandr off in Kyiv.
Her mother and stepfather were arrested in the Rouen area on 30 September 2025 and taken into police custody, then detained pending trial. At the time, Alexandr was still in Kyiv, prosecutors said, and “clearly” expressed his desire to return to France “and reintegrate his place of deployment”.
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Prison for his mother and stepfather
His wish was granted thanks to the joint mobilization of the Polish and French authorities. Alexandr has “returned to France safely”, assured Rouen public prosecutor Sébastien Gallois.
The pair were referred to criminal court this Thursday. The latter “sentenced the stepfather to two years in prison with continued detention, and the stepmother to two years in prison, including one year on simple probation, with continued detention for a fixed term,” he explained. “The court also imposed an additional penalty in the form of revocation of parental authority over the mother regarding her child, the victim of this fact. »
