To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser that supports HTML5video A woman who discovered her mother had to give up her firstborn due to poverty has finally reunited with her brother decades later. In 1960 Diane, a 16-year-old living in Salisbury, found herself pregnant . One of nine children, her parents were already struggling to feed their family.
So, a week after Diane eventually gave birth, she was told there was no other choice but than to give her son , who she’d named Richard, for adoption. Diane later went on to have another four children but kept the existence of her first-born a secret for years. After suffering a breakdown, Diane eventually decided to share the heartbreaking decision she’d been forced to make as a teenager.
By this point her daughter Tracey Boyle was in her 30s. The revelation came as a complete shock. ‘I couldn’t believe what she was telling me.
I never thought there was another brother. Never ever,’ she said. In 2015, after a battle with leukaemia, Diane died.
‘She died with all of that heartache and pain inside her,’ her daughter said. The following year Tracey faced a shocking trauma of her own when her 25-year-old son died in his sleep. It was after this that Tracey decided she wanted to finally track down her older brother, turning to the ITV programme Long Lost Family for help.
‘It hit home for me how my mother felt and then I was determined to find him’’ she explained. Her journ.