David Stevenson agreed to go on the new series of hit ITV show Long Lost Family in the hopes of finally getting some answers about his early years, and who his real family are
A man who was abandoned as a baby and left for dead has found some extraordinary answers as to where he came from after a decade-long search.
David Stevenson agreed to go on the new series of hit ITV show Long Lost Family in the hopes of finally getting some answers about his early years, and who his real family are. In December 1960, David was found inside a locked apartment block in North-West London. He was just a few days old and cold, but well fed and has spent the rest of his life wondering who his borth mother was and what led her to making the decision to leave him defenceless.
In the show, 65-year-old David returns to the flats more than six decades on and with the use of DNA technology and top detectives, managed to find some answers.
David said: “This place is part of me and part of my identity, no question. This is where my story starts here, so coming back here is emotional. Babies are often left at a police station or a hospital. Whoever put me here…this is a locked private block. Were some of the other residents somehow involved? The WPC arrived and discovered me on the floor with people milling round.”
Using the apartment building as their primary clue, they developed several hypotheses about the residents.
More recently David has turned to searching through DNA, which revealed that he has both Dutch and French heritage. While this is a significant development, the search then stalled.
Detective work found a strong connection to a particular Dutch family who lived nearby and living family members, including a woman called Marianne agreed to take DNA tests.
The pair of them testing enables LLF expert Ariel Bruce to – with certainty – identify David’s birth mother. Her name is Petra and she sadly died in 2010. Upon seeing a photo of David, the family immediately see a likeness to Petra.
Show host Nicky Campbell then travelled to the Netherlands to meet with Marianne – David’s aunt and his first cousins Saskia and Bart.
It then came out that that nobody in the family ever knew that she was pregnant and gave up a baby in London.
After finishing school, Petra moved to Paris to work as an Au Pair and was living there when David was conceived. This tallies with David’s French DNA and the thinking that his birth father is French. She then moved to London and subsequently parted with David.
She grew up in a strict Catholic household where news of her pregnancy would not have been tolerated. Marianne says: “It was parents after Second World War. They would be angry.”
Bart adds: “They were Catholic and they would also have been very concerned with what society would think of having a child born out of wedlock.”
Although some residents were investigated by the police, enquiries failed to help identify David’s birth parents or link them to him. David was adopted by the Stevenson family and had a happy childhood in nearby Edgware. He grew up knowing about his start in life, but for a long time he wasn’t curious to know more.
“I did know that I was a foundling but as far as I was concerned I had a mum and dad and it wasn’t a problem for me.”
Davina McCall then told David that Petra has family members in Rotterdam who were all too willing to take DNA tests.
She passes on a letter that they have written him, where they explain that they would love to meet and share as much information about Petra as they can. David is moved by this gesture.
He added: “To meet people close to Petra would be very nice. To put a name to my mother and a picture, it’s a profound feeling. That is amazing.”