Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads — BBC News

[0:03] this one is my mother's that one's for my grandfather this one for my mom we have grown [0:15] up with my grandma my grandpa before he died i was raised by them because my mom died and my [0:23] dad was nowhere to be found my name is kirota iwanchakachaka people call me all my life we've [0:35] grown up knowing that my dad was dead i think the judges that worked with my dad said he died [0:43] working for the army i'm like no dad no no mom was i just a no fun it's begun as a small individual [0:54] cases they involve men who came to kenya my soldiers on duty to train and become battle ready in the [1:06] course of their training they father children the women and children who've been abandoned by their [1:12] soldiers brought their issues to me yvonne was a very interesting case in yvonne's birth certificate [1:21] there was no father's name ever listed her grandma has little to no trace of information i was quite [1:32] certain that we would be able to find yvonne's father kevin told me that they would help me try [1:39] to find my dad so i was like what is he saying doesn't he know that my dad is dead the only way [1:50] of holding the british arm into account would be to find solicitors and barristers in the uk to be [1:56] able to put up their claims in the uk i think james was this missing piece i could see he was really [2:06] passionate about seeking justice for these women and children the report says the grandmother stated [2:12] to me at the end of 2009 she was informed by others that the father had passed away i didn't believe it [2:18] i did not believe that this bloke is dead there are certain cases that stand out for whatever reason [2:26] it's like no other case that we've ever seen as a firm but how the hell were we going to find this guy [2:34] we had to think outside the box a little bit get creative detectives working the case for decades [2:41] say cutting edge dna testing allowed them to make a match he was tracked using dna through a genealogy [2:47] website the site identified someone who had the same great great great great grandfather as the killer [2:54] from there investigators built an elaborate family tree and then used a process of elimination to zero in [3:00] on suspects a fellow lawyer had this light bulb moment what if we could take the tech used in the [3:08] golden state case and use it for kenya in the family courts it's not dna that i find particularly [3:19] interesting i would say looking for the evidence it's finding solutions to problems and this is a [3:29] solution to a problem about who somebody is and where they come from we travel out to kenya armed with [3:38] a suitcase full of dna kits on the first day i'd met with i think seven or eight mothers and the [3:46] stories were all identical and then day two another six ten twelve people and every day was the same [3:55] and then the cases started getting more and more challenging it's going to wipe it inside your cheeks [4:05] after the first day i remember going back to my room and thinking how are we going to manage all of [4:09] this because there's so many so we took these dna samples in december and it wasn't until the end of [4:16] january beginning of february that they started to trickle through we were completely taken aback [4:22] we can see that we've got 16 allele in common at that marker 14 in common 15 in common nothing like [4:34] this has ever been done before where you're engaging dna testing on such a scale we had no idea how many [4:41] leads we'd get and we were astounded how many good results we had completely distant family members [4:47] we had relatively close family members all the way up to the bullseye hit of fathers being named and [4:53] identified so each case does have a letter and we're going case a case b case sequentially we're now up to [5:02] cases q and r today okay say that's um everyone leading proceedings this was a proper needle in the [5:13] haystack when the results came back we didn't find anything close enough to make an easy direct [5:23] relationship but there was a distant match yes so all of a sudden this distant relative of yvonne just [5:32] pops up on ancestry.com so i sent her a few emails and then nothing maybe a month went past and then all [5:42] of a sudden i get a call through from reception and the lady says oh it's this relative on the phone [5:51] i spoke to james on the phone telling us that through my dna they'd found a relative in kenya [6:01] it was a huge surprise she said that there was nobody in her family who had any connection [6:08] whatsoever with the british army or with kenya or nanyuki apart from two lads two guys who were the sons [6:18] of her first cousin and that was our way into this case my cousin said that both her sons are in [6:27] kenya but only one of them was in the army if this is right this guy has led his daughter to believe [6:36] he's dead he's very much alive yeah how can he be alive again to just send someone to lie that he's [6:49] dead i feel disowned so this morning we are dealing with a von's case first that's case a this is our [7:04] orphan or not so orphan orphan so we issued this application 26th of june and we're now the 3rd of [7:12] december and we still haven't found this blood so he's gone to ground we can't find him we've tried [7:18] the best part of what a dozen times 10 11 times her dad is still evading us we think now we've had [7:26] three different addresses for him he seems to be moving around a lot we've sent the bailiff round [7:31] i think about 10 11 times now still can't pin him down so today's outcome for that case is we're [7:38] going to try getting hold of his mother let's get granny in get granny and see what she'll tell us [7:46] i feel a bit sorry summoning granny to court yeah but um he might have a really good explanation as [7:56] to why this 17 year old girl believes that her dad is dead today is the fourth hearing that we've got in [8:05] relation to the now 21 cases we've got in front of the judge it might be that von's father just pops [8:12] up at court today i'll be very surprised if that happens we're in front of the highest family court [8:20] judge in the land if you choose to ignore a high court order there's going to be consequences for you [8:26] and ultimately yaron deserves to know who her dad is out of nowhere the last thing i'd expect was that [8:37] honestly it was unheard of i haven't had such an astounding day in court ever i think the man [8:52] we've been chasing for months and months and months was just there opposite me as if nothing had ever [8:59] happened i don't know whether it's guilt or shame or embarrassment or the fact we've involved his [9:05] family members or i mean we were applying to to arrest him today we're applying for a bench warrant [9:12] he has agreed to a dna test and that will resolve it for him either way yeah whatever it will be so [9:19] but one way or the other and now it's just the agonizing wait to get the dna results and it's your [9:29] fundamental right to know who your family is your identity your heritage and these young people [9:39] are now in a situation whereby they can actually turn on a light for the first time in their lives [9:45] to find out who their dads are as is their right your dna even when dead still lives might not be [9:54] through you but through your living relatives your dna will always be living no matter how old we are [10:00] we always want to feel that we are a child to someone we assume our dreams we've asked for our [10:07] heritage james i've got these results for you would you like to have a look i think when we went to see [10:31] her we didn't have really any hope at all did we it's life changing isn't it i think we should tell [10:42] them yeah hi yvonne can you hear us to see it hi how are you doing yvonne i wanted to call you today [10:58] because we have some news for you um yvonne we we found your dad we didn't know what we'd get but [11:08] we were able to find him and he's there he's in england i've met him he's alive how do you feel i'm just [11:20] shocked because i never thought he would reveal himself throughout those years we can't promise [11:33] you anything he's not obliged to do anything it's up to him and his conscience i can ask him i can ask [11:43] your father if you'd like to meet him would you want me to ask that if you want to meet me then i [11:55] i want to meet him i'm ready