It was like the heart-warming story of a young Briton who went missing and was found in France for years after his grandmother’s death.
A campaign was launched in the French media in 2011, along with a Facebook page called “Looking for Dominic”, to find Dominic Dickson, as his family wanted to give him the inheritance his grandmother left him.
The story of hardship and the reunited family looked set to have a happy ending, with Mr Dickson promising to use the money to set up a home for young homeless people.
But The Telegraph can now reveal there is a darker side to the feel-good story, which was widely reported in the British press at the time.
It includes a campaign of silence against violence and abuse against foster children in a small French village and brutality among adults that led Mr Dickson, now 48, to flee the family home there.
‘I had to escape’
“No one cared enough to protect the children. “At that time, I needed to escape a society where people were openly abusing children and adults did not care enough to intervene,” he said.
The true story behind his disappearance has come to light thanks to a new novel written by his younger sister Hannah, 44, partly inspired by the shocking events.
Dominic Dickson’s story first emerged in 2011. Her parents, John and Madeleine, both lawyers, left the “stress of English life” in Winchester and settled in the village of Bussière-Galant, south of Limoges in Périgord, south-west France. In the 1990s, when I was 15.
Mr Dickson’s grandmother, Lieselotte, remained in Epsom, Surrey.
Mr Dickson left home as a teenager and, after a period of homelessness in Montpellier and Perpignan, devoted himself to running a soup kitchen in Rochefort on the west coast for people without food or shelter.
Thanks to the support of a charity, he got a job as a mouse catcher and then gardener in Surgères, east of La Rochelle, in 2008.
But his parents had no idea what he was up to and had lost all contact with him for eight years at the time. The Dicksons insisted: “We were not estranged, but our son was always a free spirit, a little different and not very attached to family ties.”
Parents opened Facebook page
Everything would change with the death of Lieselotte, the closest of Dominic’s four siblings. He left her an inheritance of around £10,000 and his family decided to find him.
After his parents launched a Facebook campaign and contacted local media, which published an article featuring their son’s photo, the family soon received a flood of messages about sightings of the wandering Briton and his black and white dog Pitchoune.
After years of silence, she contacted her mother, who was “crying a bit on the phone.”
“I don’t regret anything I did, not even from the street. It helped shape my character. “But now it’s time to find my family again,” said Mr Dickson, adding that he would use the money to establish an association for young homeless people.
His mother left a message on Facebook saying “thank you so much everyone for your help and support.” But little has been said about Mr Dickson’s decision to leave home and cut all ties.
New features abuse themes
Now the real reasons were revealed in the novel The Story of Emiliah Bent, written by his sister, a lawyer living in Grenoble.
Although the book is mostly fictional, depicting a young woman developing a torrid affair with a powerful and domineering chief executive, it is inspired in part by the chilling events the brothers witnessed at Bussière-Galant in the 1990s.
“I was 11 when we moved there,” Ms. Dickson said. “I have witnessed child abuse before, but never something as big as what happened in Bussière-Galant.
“When I entered the local primary school, it became clear from the very beginning that the principal, Monsieur (Jean) Semendjan, who was also the mayor of the village, was choosing adopted children for beatings and was taking great pleasure in it. Because of the violence he committed.”
One passage in the book states that he was, on the one hand, “teacher, school principal and village mayor, shaking hands, tasting cheese, laughing with the villagers” and, on the other hand, waging a “reign of terror” in his primary school.
A boy who lived in the village at the time and was targeted in his older brother Dickson’s class confirmed the abuse allegation to The Telegraph.
“When we would wash our hands before lunch, Monsieur Semendjan would randomly slap me or my brother very hard just because it was us,” Charlotte said. [not her real name].
“Of course our foster family didn’t care. “If they found out, they would hit us again, so we kept everything to ourselves.”
Victim ‘never got over the trauma’
The book describes the brutal punishments endured by Charlotte’s brother. “We all watched in silence as the Maître gave all his strength to the slaps on Ludovic’s back. [not his real name] cheeks… The 10-year-old boy burst into tears, still standing, still rooted in obedience,” one passage reads.
She said Charlotte had never gotten over the trauma of her brother, who died of cancer.
He added: There were four such families in the village and they took us in for financial reasons, but they treated us badly. “I don’t have a single good memory.”
He added that other foster children were also targeted by Monsieur Semendjan, who died in 2021. One scene in the novel is an exact account of what Ms. Dickson witnessed in the 1990s, when a young foster child, a girl aged five or six, was dragged away. across the playground from the side of the hair.
Charlotte also said she knew a former foster child who was abused and has since committed suicide.
Explaining his decision to leave home, Mr Dickson said: “I became friends with several of Bussière-Galant’s foster children and it was clear that they were treated as second-class citizens.
“I heard from a few people that some foster parents in the village were abusive. And everyone knew the principal’s situation.
“I left the village because I felt so bad how much harm was being done to these children and I couldn’t take it anymore. “I moved from town to town so I wouldn’t be easily found.”
His parents, brother and two sisters remained in the village.
The Dicksons said they hope the book and its outspokenness will raise awareness of the plight of vulnerable children.
“The village knew about it. It was an open secret, but nobody did anything,” Mr Dickson said.
“I was always trying to help people in desperate situations, and perhaps my grandmother’s legacy was a sign of using this story for the greater good.”