TESTIMONY. “We are looking for our father who disappeared 35 years ago”


Jennifer and Angélique, two sisters, lost track of him in 1986. Today as a couple and a mother, they no longer want to live with a lack and the fear that their father, Jacques, is on the street.

“The worst thing for us is to imagine that he is outside, hungry, in the cold…”, explains Angélique, 39, “and that he remembers us without us be there for him,” continues Jennifer, 37. They are the two daughters of Jacques Thomas, vanished in 1986. Only Angélique remembers him because she was 4 years old the last time he saw them. Jennifer was too small. “We had just moved to Caen, in Calvados, with our mother, leaving our father in the apartment in Nanterre, in the Hauts-de-Seine, after their separation. He took the trouble to make 200 km to bring our bikes back…”

Not really the behavior of a father who intends to abandon his children! His disappearance, however, is not entirely inexplicable. “Let’s say that our father had a lot of problems that made his life difficult, they say modestly. This explains the latest reliable news obtained shortly after, by neighbors: he had lost his job in the building, his apartment and had become homeless in the streets of Nanterre. This is where our research began.”

“Our father had a half-sun tattooed on his forehead”

The sisters did everything, like detectives! They checked that he was not dead by asking for his birth certificate, on October 24, 1948 in L’Aigle, in Orne. They wrote to the Red Cross, consulted the hospitals in the Ile-de-France region, the telephone operators, the Samu social, the elections office of the town hall of Nanterre… Nothing! But some research is inaccessible to them, protected by the confidentiality of personal data. Hence their idea of ​​triggering the alert via social networks ([email protected]).

“He is easily recognizable because he had a half-sun tattooed on his forehead following a bet. A lost bet, we imagine!”, they laugh affectionately. Adding seriously: “But we say to ourselves that he can wear a cap, and that at 72 years old, the ink may have faded… It is his age, too, which makes us seek more actively for two years, like our children’s questions about their mystery grandfather. The street does not let people grow old…”

“Knowing that he is well, that’s all we ask”

Tracks, there are still some, like the one he lives at the other end of France. There is also the search via his Social Security number which they have reconstructed and are available to those who would like to help them. Of course, they also think that he may not want to reconnect with the past: “We are ready to accept it. Knowing that he is well, that’s all we ask, even if he didn’t want to get back in touch. We have three children each, we have a life, we just don’t want to think that we’re leaving our father on the street.”



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