Long Lost Family returns with series 14, and two heartbreaking stories of families divided.
In episode 1 (Monday, July 08, 2024), presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell helped reunite a brother and sister who were torn apart at a young age. Their adoptive parents then lied to them about having no siblings.
Now, decades later, the pair were reunited in emotional scenes…
***Warning: spoilers from Long Lost Family series 14 episode 1 ahead***
Tegan Cornish’s search for her younger brother Kenneth Allen
Episode 1 of Long Lost Family introduced Tegan Cornish, who was desperate to find her missing brother. The pair were adopted together as small children, however her baby brother was sent back into care after just a few weeks.
Looking into her adoption many years later, Tegan was shocked to discover that she had arrived at her new family home as a toddler. Alongside her was her baby brother Kenneth. So why was he returned to foster care when he was just three months old?
Tegan, now 61, subsequently had a difficult and lonely childhood, and yearned to find out what happened to her brother and to have him back in her life.
Tragically, both Tegan and Kenneth were not happily adopted. While Tegan was taunted with the threat that she’d be send back into care if she wasn’t “good”, Kenneth was told he didn’t have any siblings.
Tegan, who now has an adult daughter, grew up in Ealing, West London, with older adoptive parents. She describes feeling a crushing loneliness as a child.
When she was in her 40s, she started to look into her birth family and was shocked to discover that she had a younger brother called Kenneth. She said: “It’s quite an intense thing to think that you’ve got a blood relative there and you don’t know them.”
Long Lost Family’s specialist intermediaries access Kenneth’s adoption paperwork and discover that he wasn’t adopted until he was two years old. Now a delivery driver, living in London, Ken told Nicky: “Loneliness is my epitome of my youth.”
He had no idea he had an older sister. Tegan and Kenneth were finally reunited, 60 odd years after they were brutally parted.
Ros reunited with her long lost daughter Christine, now Lyndsey
The Long Lost Family episode also followed a mother desperate to find the daughter she was forced to give up as a teenager.
Roslynne Webb was 16 years of age when she became pregnant, and her strict parents decided the child had to be adopted. It was the only child Ros ever had. Fifty-nine years later, Long Lost Family took on her search.
Ros, now 76, recalled having six weeks in a Church of England-run Mother and Baby home with her daughter, who she named Christine. She said: “She was just gorgeous. She was fair, sweet faced. It was just the best thing. The best thing ever.”
Heartbreakingly, Ros had to give up Christine. She returned home and later married, but was unable to have any more children. Long Lost Family’s specialist intermediaries discovered that Christine was adopted by a vicar and his wife in Kent and that she is now called Lyndsey.
When the two finally met, they couldn’t believe their similarities. Ros said: “I’m full of joy and happiness! I want to stand on that step and shout to everybody. You know, I have met her, I’ve met my daughter.”
How many episodes is Long Lost Family series 14?
The latest series of Long Lost Family is seven episodes. The first airs on Monday, July 08, 2024 at 9pm on ITV1. It airs every Monday thereafter for seven weeks.
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell present, while a team of trained intermediaries, DNA experts and investigators are busy searching for connections behind the scenes.
The series “investigates mysteries that have troubled entire lives, uncovering answers that no one else could find”.
Long Lost Family series 14 kicks off on Monday, July 08, 2024 at 9pm on ITV1.
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