It all started when a Scottish couple asked the girl’s mother Susan Gervaise (4 years), if they could take the baby to the Disney theme park. After her mother’s yes, Susan’s life changed forever: she never returned, she lived in three countries and 53 years later she was only able to reunite with her brothers, with whom she lived in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, United United.
The story of the woman who was “stolen” from her family in the UK when she was only four years old and was raised by travelers in Canada and New Zealand before settling in Australia has finally reunited with her biological family, says the daily Daily mail.
Susan Gervaise is now 57 years old and was separated from her biological family in Pontefract, West Yorkshire in 1969 after travelers invited her to spend the holidays at a Disney theme park.
The couple, from Scotland, asked Susan’s biological mother if she could take her on a trip and promised to take her back to England later.
Their mother gave them a copy of Susan’s birth certificate, and that was the key: she ended up living in Canada, then Australia, then New Zealand. The couple raised her as her own daughter.
A unique story
Gervaise, whose birth name is Susan Preece, said she believed she was disowned by her biological family and “spoiled” by her so-called adoptive parents.
She didn’t find out she was robbed until she was 16 and he had had no contact with his biological family until he was 53 years after that trip that promised to visit Disney and from which he never returned. But she Susan wanted her to piece together her own story and eventually she managed to track down her biological relatives on Facebook. After contacting them, she is now reunited with four of her six biological brothers in West Yorkshire, England.
Susan is a mother of three and a grandmother of four and lives in Australia. But she had lived in an old traveling rectory in Pontefract, West Yorkshire in her early years until 1969, where she met the couple who eventually took her away.
Susan remembers what those years were like: “As a child I lived with my six brothers in an old rectory on a traveler’s site. We weren’t travelers. My mother was alone and we all went in and out of foster families. That was where I became friends. of a Scottish couple, “he explains.
He continued: “The woman, whom I call my mother, had two children and suffered from multiple sclerosis. I think they wanted a girl. They asked my mother if they could take me to Disney and she gave them my birth certificate so that could put me in the passport. “
At that time, a child could travel abroad with a birth certificate and parental permission.
The Scottish couple then added her name to the family’s passport, allowing them to “adopt” her and be legally abroad. They took her to Canada, then Australia and then New Zealand.. “I lived with the traveling community and lived a precious life where I was so pampered,” she says.
Susan has fond memories of her childhood and adolescence: “My mother died of multiple sclerosis when I was 10, but even then, having grown up in the center of a traveling community.I was very much loved. I’ve always been happy to grow up. Travel around the world“he told The Wakefield Express.
She found out she was kidnapped when she needed to get a passport to return to Australia from New Zealand at the age of 16. She had always been told that she had been adopted.
“We went to New Zealand and I didn’t need a passport to enter the country, but when it came to returning to Australia, I needed one,” he told The Wakefield Express. “I applied, but I needed my mother’s or my father’s signature, that’s when my father told me that I hadn’t been adopted, that they had stolen from me.”
“The enormity of what happened to me didn’t hit me, I just moved on with my life,” he said.
to look for his brothers
Susan recalls when it was the break to start looking for her family: “It was just when someone who was adopted asked me how my family would feel in the UK and that was a light bulb moment for me.”
After her husband encouraged the search and posted an appeal on Facebook on the Knottingley and Ferrybridge local community page in June, her family was found within 30 minutes: all of her siblings are alive and all but one live around Pontefract. . .
She said: “When I spoke to my family they were crying hysterically because I was alive.”
Susan will remain in the UK until 20 October, celebrating her 57th birthday with her family.
About his “disappearance”, she has a theory: ‘Even today we don’t know why the police were never involved. I think it’s due to my mother giving them permission to take me and the fact that we were in and out of her custody. “Susan’s granddaughter said her mother had been looking for her for years, but with no luck. .
The biological mother died tragically eight years ago, which means she never knew her daughter was safe.
Susan says she is proud of her research and her reunion: “Send a message to anyone who has lost someone that miracles happen. There is hope.”
Source: Clarin
