‘I Feel Betrayed’: Mother Slams UK Prison Service After Son’s Abductor Accidentally Freed

​LONDON, UK — A French mother has expressed her profound heartbreak and fury, stating she feels “utterly betrayed” by British authorities after a prison administration blunder allowed her son’s abductor to walk free.

​Claire N’Djosse, 46, revealed that her “life has stopped” since her five-year-old son, Laurys N’Djosse Adeyeye, was brutally abducted from France nearly two years ago. Her sole glimmer of hope was shattered when British-Nigerian national Ifedayo Adeyeye, 58, was mistakenly released from HMP Pentonville in London on April 21, 2026—just one day after being handed a consecutive 12-month jail sentence.

​”I felt betrayed by the place where I believed him to be the most secure,” N’Djosse said, speaking through an interpreter. “Now that Adeyeye is gone again, I have lost all hope of seeing my child again. I am upset. I don’t know how I’m going to keep going.”

​A Calculated Abduction

​The international legal saga began in July 2024 in Grenoble, France. Adeyeye, an engineer, was granted his first-ever overnight visitation with Laurys following a court-approved progressive contact plan. Instead of returning the toddler to N’Djosse—his primary caregiver—Adeyeye executed what high court judges have described as a “complex, sophisticated, and long-term planned” abduction.

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​Adeyeye secretly procured both British and Nigerian passports for the child without the mother’s knowledge. He fled France via the UK to Nigeria, where he subsequently obtained fraudulent local guardianship orders placing the boy with his own relatives.

​Because Nigeria is not a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, N’Djosse faced insurmountable hurdles retrieving her son. In a landmark legal first, UK High Court Judge Mr. Justice Hayden ruled that British courts held jurisdiction over Adeyeye as a dual citizen, ordering him to return the boy. When Adeyeye returned to the UK alone months later, he was arrested and jailed for contempt of court.

​The Great Escape: Dinner, Drinks, and Fleeing to Spain

​The outrage surrounding the case intensified following revelations of the staggering administrative incompetence that enabled Adeyeye’s escape.

​Despite receiving a fresh 12-month sentence for continued non-compliance on April 20, and facing an international arrest warrant and extradition orders back to France, Pentonville prison officials mistakenly processed his release the very next morning due to what they claimed was a “communication failure.”

​Worse still, a three-day delay ensued before prison authorities formally notified law enforcement that Adeyeye was unlawfully at large. High Court proceedings revealed that during those unmonitored 72 hours, the fugitive “strolled about” the London area, enjoyed an expensive dinner, drank heavily at a local pub, and wired thousands of pounds out of his bank account before boarding a flight.

​Intelligence reports from the Metropolitan Police suggest Adeyeye successfully fled the UK and landed in Spain on April 22—a full 48 hours before British police were even aware he was missing from his cell.

​Mr. Justice Hayden fiercely condemned the prison staff’s “alarming lack of urgency,” stating that the public is “entitled to expect far better.” The judge took the extraordinary step of waiving standard anonymity laws to release photos of both the father and the young boy to aid a global manhunt.

​’Why is my child being punished?’

​For N’Djosse, a Cameroonian national living in southeast France, the bureaucratic failure has translated into visceral, agonizing heartbreak.

​”My child is being manipulated like a puppet. He has never spent a night away from me before this happened. He must be terrified, missing his home, his mother, his entire world,” she wept. “I beg you to hear my screams. I beg those who are parents, and those who aren’t yet. Please help me find my child.”

​While the UK Ministry of Justice has launched an internal investigation into the logistical breakdown, the Metropolitan Police alongside Spanish authorities and Interpol continue their urgent hunt for the elusive engineer. For a devastated mother thousands of miles away, justice delayed continues to be a nightmare realized.