It seemed like a heartwarming story of a young Brit who disappeared in France for years before being found after the death of his grandmother.
In 2011, a campaign was launched in the French media, along with a Facebook page called “In Search of Dominic”, to find Dominic Dickson because his family wanted to give him the inheritance left to him by his grandmother.
The story of the hardships he suffered and a reunited family seemed to have a happy ending when Mr Dickson promised to use the money to set up a home for young homeless people.
But The Telegraph can now reveal that there was a darker underbelly to the feel-good story that was widely reported in the British press at the time.
It involves violence and abuse against foster children in a small French village – and a campaign of silence about the brutality among the adults that prompted Mr Dickson, now 48, to run away from his family home there.
‘I just had to escape’
“No one cared enough to protect the children. At the time, I just needed to escape from a society where people openly abuse children and where adults don’t 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. His parents John and Madeleine – both lawyers – had left ‘the stress of English life’ in Winchester to settle in the village of Bussière-Galant south of Limoges in the Périgord, in the south-west of France. in the 1990s, when he was fifteen.
Mr Dickson’s grandmother, Lieselotte, remained in Epsom, Surrey.
Mr Dickson left home in his teens and after a period of homelessness in Montpellier and Perpignan eventually ran a soup kitchen in Rochefort on the west coast for people without food or shelter.
Thanks to support from a charity, he got a job as a rat catcher in 2008 and then as a gardener in Surgères, east of La Rochelle.
But his parents had no idea what he was up to and at that point had lost all contact with him for eight years. “We had no quarrel, but our son has always been a free spirit, a little different, and not very attached to family ties,” the Dicksons emphasized.
Parents have launched a Facebook page
That would all change with the death of Lieselotte, to whom Dominic was closest to his four siblings. She left him an inheritance of around £10,000 and his parents decided to track him down.
After his parents launched a Facebook campaign and contacted the local press, which published an article with a photo of their son, the family soon received numerous reports of sightings of the wandering Brit and his black and white dog Pitchoune.
After all those years of silence, he contacted his mother, who “cried a little on the phone.”
‘I don’t regret anything I’ve done, not even on the streets. It helped forge my character. But it’s time to find my family,” Dickson said at the time, adding that he would use the money to set up an association for young homeless people.
His mother left a message on the Facebook site in which she “thanks everyone for your help and support.” But little was said about Mr Dickson’s decision to leave the house and cut all ties.
Novel contains themes of abuse
The real reasons have now emerged in a novel called The Story of Emiliah Bent, written by his sister, a legal professional living in Grenoble.
Although the book is largely fictional and depicts a young woman who develops a torrid relationship with a powerful and dominant CEO, it is partly inspired by the chilling events witnessed by the Bussière-Galant siblings in the 1990s.
“I was 11 when we moved there,” Mrs Dickson said. “I had witnessed child abuse before, but nothing to the extent that happened in Bussière-Galant.
“When I started at the local primary school, it became very clear from the start that the headmaster, Mr (Jean) Semendjan, who was also the mayor of the village, was choosing foster children to hit, and that he was getting a lot of pleasure out of it the violence he caused.”
On the one hand he was ‘teacher, headmaster and mayor, shaking hands, tasting cheese, laughing with the villagers’, on the other hand he imposed a ‘reign of terror’ on his primary school, as the book recalls in one passage.
One foster child in the village at the time, whose older brother was the designated target in Mrs Dickson’s class, confirmed the alleged abuse to The Telegraph.
“When we were washing our hands before lunch, Mr. Semendjan would randomly hit my brother or me very hard, just because it was us,” says Charlotte. [not her real name].
“Of course our foster family didn’t care. They would just hit us again if they found out, so we kept it all to ourselves.”
Victim ‘never gets over trauma’
The book tells about the brutal punishments that Charlotte’s brother had to endure. “We all watched in silence as Maître put all his strength into the blows that hit Ludovic’s body. [not his real name] cheeks… the 10-year-old boy burst into tears, still standing, still rooted in obedience,” reads one passage.
Charlotte’s brother, who died of cancer, never got over the trauma he endured, she said.
She added: There were four such families in the village and they took us in for financial reasons but treated us badly. I don’t have any good memory.”
She added that other foster children were targeted by Monsieur Semendjan, who died in 2021. One scene in the novel is an exact description of what Mrs. Dickson saw in the 1990s, of a young foster child, a girl of five or six, being dragged by the hair through the playground.
Charlotte said she was also aware of a former foster child who was a victim of abuse and who has since committed suicide.
Speaking about his decision to leave home, Mr Dickson said: “I became friends with some of Bussière-Galant’s foster children, and it was clear they were treated like second-class citizens.
“I heard from several people that certain foster families in the village were abusive. And everyone knew about the director.
“I left the village because I felt so strongly how harmful it was to these children and I could no longer bear it. I moved from city to city to avoid being found too easily.”
His parents, brother and two sisters remained in the village.
The Dicksons said they hope the book, and his speech, will raise awareness about the plight of defenseless children.
“The village knew about this. It was an open secret, but no one did anything,” Dickson said.
“I always tried to help people in desperate situations and my grandmother’s legacy was perhaps a sign to use this story for the greater good.”