Found Your Seat

He was a child who needed help. It took more than forty years to find the words for what happened next.

At eight years old, a boy arrives in Australia from Belgium without a word of English. Struggling to communicate, his distress is mistaken for bad behaviour. He is sent to a school meant to support him—a place where the adults hold the power, appearances conceal cruelty, and children learn that speaking can carry a terrible cost.

Found Your Seat is a deeply personal memoir of childhood abuse, institutional betrayal and the long struggle to reclaim a voice. Through vivid memories of classrooms, family life and friendships formed in fear, it follows a boy learning to survive and the man carrying those experiences into adulthood.

There are moments of tenderness: a friendship, a small act of courage, the comfort of being understood by someone who was there. There is also the enduring weight of silence, and a search for acknowledgement complicated by missing records, unanswered questions and official processes.

Written with anger, vulnerability and compassion for the children whose stories remain unheard, Found Your Seat confronts the lasting consequences of failing to protect a child.

After decades of silence, one survivor is putting his experience into words—and making room for others to recognise their own.

For every child who was taught to stay quiet. For every adult still trying to be heard.