UK: Susan Gervaise abducted aged 4 – finds her family again after 53 years | news

When four-year-old Susan Gervais went on a family vacation from Scotland in 1969, she had no idea she and her family wouldn’t see each other again for decades. After 53 years they are now celebrating an incredibly happy ending that touches the heart.

Englishman”Daily Mail“Reports of an unexpected reunion. Focus: Susan Gervais, who has traveled the world since her disappearance — and is surrounded by her own family.

According to newspaper reports, a Scottish couple asked Susan’s birth mother if they could take the toddler on holiday; The two passengers promised to take her to a Disney park and of course they would take her back to her family. The mother agreed, gave the two strangers a copy of the birth certificate — and unsuspectingly handed her daughter over to the couple.

But little Susan did not return – she traveled around the world on her own. Simply unbelievable: her Scottish friends tricked her into believing her biological family had rejected her – and pretended to be her foster parents. A story that Susan believed. And, by his own accounts, he was “spoiled to no end” by his new family. Over the years, according to British reports, the family migrated: first to Canada, then to Australia – and finally to New Zealand.

Totally Crazy: According to Susan, the kidnapping doesn’t feel like a kidnapping at all – she’s arrived with her new family and community of travelers, living a completely normal family life. It was years later that the truth came out.

Gervais told the Daily Mail that he never questioned his family situation. Since international travel for children was permitted in the late 1960s with a birth certificate and legal guardian’s consent, couples could safely take their little companion from one country to the next at any time.

That changed when Susan turned 16. Susan says: “We went to New Zealand. I didn’t need a passport when entering, but I needed one when we wanted to go to Australia. I applied, but I needed a signature from my mother or father. ” Since her “adopted mother” was already dead, only her father remained – he finally admitted the truth to her. Susan: “Then Dad told me she didn’t adopt me, they stole me.”

A message that feels like a punch in the stomach. Amazing: Susan didn’t touch on the story of the incredible family lie at first. He told the Daily Mail: “I didn’t know the horror of what happened to me. I just got on with my life.

Decades later, after she came of age, she only had her “click moment.” Susan: “I only realized after an adoptee asked me how my family in England would feel about this.”

Now a mother of three and a grandmother, Susan, with the help of her husband, began searching for her relatives – and found them in 30 minutes! In June, the couple posted an appeal on the Facebook page of their hometown of Nottingley and Ferrybridge Parish, near Pontefract in West Yorkshire.

Here it is: Her siblings are monitored and contacted at any time. Susan was overjoyed: “When I spoke to my family, they cried for joy because I was alive.” Susan has already managed to hug four of her six siblings again – and celebrated her 57th birthday with them in her British homeland.

Susan’s niece Emma McFadden on the happy reunion: “We never thought this would happen. It was incredible – especially for my mother (one of Susan’s sisters, ed.). She has Parkinson’s and dementia, and it’s amazing that she was reunited with her sister before she got worse. Now it is complete.

Unfortunately, only Susan’s desperate mother, who had been searching for her daughter all her life, did not live to see the belated family happiness – she died eight years ago.

Susan: “To this day we don’t know why the police didn’t intervene. I think she may have moved away because my mother gave them permission to take me with them and we’ve always been in foster homes. But their search was in vain.